Before the quake, 55 per cent of children were missing out on their right to an education. Despite post-disaster efforts to return children to the classroom, many remain out of school. Additionally, issues related to child development receive little attention, especially outside urban areas.
To highlight the challenges faced by youth, UNICEF and partners PANOS Caribbean and Fondation haitienne d’Aide aux Vulnérables are providing media training to vulnerable children. In these trainings, young people learn how to use radio and video equipment, write reports and take pictures to bring attention to the needs and challenges facing their peers.
UNICEF moderator Femi Oke discussed this innovative program with three of its organizers: Margarette Altidor, President of Fondation haitienne d’Aide aux Vulnérables; Jean-Jacques Simon, UNICEF Haiti Chief of Communication; and Jan Voordouw, Programme Coordinator of PANOS Caribbean.
Youth participation
According to Mr. Simon, the project has successfully helped children address their concerns about education, health sanitation and other aspects of day-to-day life.
“We have created unique productions where you can understand what the children of Haiti are going through,” said Mr. Simon. “The scars are not completely healed, and one of the goals here is to prepare youth for the future. Building the future of this country is one big challenge, but it’s a challenge that youth must be part of.”
Discussing opportunities for young people, Mrs. Altidor called on Haitian institutions to play a bigger role in training and educating young people. “It’s not only a job for the international organizations, but Haitian organizations, too. Young people in Haiti should try to do their best,” said Mrs. Altidor.
In December 2011 we launch Youth, Skills & Work, a new blog where young people can make their voices heard on education and skills needed to get decent jobs. Youth, Skills & Work is open to young people around the world. You can submit text, a photo, a drawing, a poem, or join the conversation by commenting on what others have contributed.
We are gathering opinions from young people as part of our work preparing the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, which will focus on the chronic mismatch between education systems and labour markets that plagues many regions of the world.
Young people who never attended school, who left early or who left without the skills needed to thrive in literate societies, are particularly vulnerable. The 2012 EFA Global Monitoring Report will ask what kinds of policies are needed to give all young people – regardless of where they live, or their gender, ethnicity or wealth – access to employment-relevant training to help them gain access to secure work that pays a living wage.
What do you think about the need for skills and training? Share your thoughts, questions, solutions and experiences at Youth, Skills & Work.
And pass on the word to friends! You can also share the movie clip above.
Jake Scobey-Thal is an associate in the Asia division at Human Rights Watch.
We told the children not to enter the building because the soldiers had weapons everywhere,” an official explained as he pointed to the corner of a government office where the soldiers had stacked guns. The troops had arrived in Gueday, a small village in the Cordillera Autonomous Region in northern Luzon, Philippines, in April 2010, just before the national elections.
As we sat in the village’s municipal hall, local officials described the military’s four-month stay, gesturing around the building the soldiers had transformed into a barracks. The officials squabbled over the size of the detachment (eventual consensus was approximately 15) and recalled how the troops gave out goods (canned food mostly). They pointed us to the basketball hoop the detachment built and the yard where soldiers would conduct morning exercises with the children.
But after the second cup of coffee, they revealed that the municipal hall was actually the second structure the detachment had used as a camp. For the first three months of their stay, the soldiers had occupied the smaller of the two buildings that make up the local elementary school.
The Philippine government is engaged in a long-running armed conflict with the insurgent New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. While the NPA maintains a presence in the mountains of northern Luzon, there has only been limited military action in the Cordillera region since the 1990s. Despite the low levels of conflict, the military continues to place troops and guns in local communities. And in some cases these troops and their guns establish a home on school grounds.
During our eight-day investigation in November, Human Rights Watch documented five cases in which the military had used parts of functioning schools in the area as encampments for military detachments since 2009. School administrators, principals, and teachers described the troubling dynamics of running a school on top of, adjacent to, and occasionally within, de facto military barracks.
The first thing we saw as we approached Sadanga High School was the military sentry overlooking the access road. The lone entrance to the school opens up to a large courtyard, surrounded by individual classrooms. A school official told us that at one point the army had placed an armed guard at the entrance, but on the day we visited the soldiers were confined to a patch of land across the yard.
Local officials assured us the land the soldiers used was actually private, adjacent to the government-owned school grounds. While a portion of the camp was built behind the school on land that could, conceivably, be independently owned, we observed that at least part of the detachment—two soldiers, their sleeping quarters, and a 3x3 camouflaged military truck—sat well within school property.
The camp sits directly across the courtyard from the school’s one entrance. In order to leave the base, the soldiers - even those encamped on the ostensibly private land – must cross the school grounds. If a firefight were to occur, students and staff could well be caught in the middle.
At Sadanga, soldiers explained that they were on a “civilian-military operation.” Their mission is not combat related, they said, but rather focused on community development. The local mayor consented to their occupation, though in the Philippines sometimes local officials find it difficult to refuse the military’s requests.
The Philippines military has had a tenuous relationship with the indigenous communities of the Cordilleras owing to the legacy of Marcos-era abuses and ongoing violations by military forces in the efforts to dismantle the communist insurgency. The NPA has also committed abuses against the local population. Civilian-military operations, such as the one at Sadanga, are part of a larger government strategy to engage indigenous communities and isolate the NPA—an effort to “win hearts and minds.” Human Rights Watch saw these types of projects in a number of schools we visited.
While some people expressed unqualified contempt for the soldiers, many not only tolerated, but appreciated the military’s presence. In Sadanga, the soldiers built an office for the school nurse and led a Boy Scout troop; in another school, soldiers had maintained a small vegetable garden.
However, the question remains: Why are the soldiers in the schools?
As the soldiers at Sadanga High noted, the military occupation of schools is banned under Philippine law, and can violate international humanitarian and human rights law—and for good reason. The presence of soldiers endangers students and staff and disrupts education. The occupation of educational facilities also makes the school a legitimate target for insurgent forces. Human Rights Watch has documented the bombing of schools as part of insurgency tactics in India, Afghanistan, and southern Thailand. In the Philippines, teachers reported that students often interact with the soldiers, and with only a few staff members, schools do not have the resources to supervise these interactions. Teachers described instances in which students ran errands for the detachment, joined soldiers in their barracks to eat lunch and watch “bang bang” movies, and ran up to soldiers to touch their guns.
A teacher in Gueday ¬– one of four who taught while the military was encamped in the school - spoke highly of the troops. She recalled the morning exercises the soldiers led with the students and the help the soldiers provided in cleaning the school. We asked her why, after three months, the soldiers had left the library and moved to the municipal hall. She replied matter-of-factly, “The community asked them to leave… The danger to the students.”
If the government is serious about putting an end to military abuses in the north, it should protect students and teachers by ordering the armed forces to respect the law and to stay out of educational facilities. The military will not win hearts and minds by putting schools in the line of fire.
INEE and The Sphere Project are pleased to announce that the Companionship Agreement between the two entities has been renewed. The Agreement recognizes the INEE Minimum Standards as Companion and Complementary Standards to the Sphere Project's Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response. The continued use of the INEE Minimum Standards alongside the Sphere Standards will help to ensure that crucial linkages between education and traditional sectors are made at the outset of an emergency - through contingency planning, multi-sectoral needs assessments and holistic response. Used together, the two good practices tools help improve the quality of humanitarian assistance, enhance the predictability and accountability of disaster preparedness and response, and improve coordination among humanitarian actors.
Through the Companionship Agreement, "both Parties recognize that education in emergencies is a necessity that can be both life-sustaining and life-saving, providing physical, psychosocial and cognitive protection. Education in emergencies is an integral component of humanitarian aid alongside assistance in water and sanitation, health, nutrition, shelter and protection. The right to education is both a human right, which applies even in emergencies, and an enabling right, allowing people to exercise their other rights, such as the right to health and the right to life with dignity."
Signed in 2008, the original Companionship Agreement established a formal relationship between INEE and The Sphere Project. As part of the Agreement, INEE Secretariat and the Sphere Project staff mainstreamed education in the revised Sphere Handbook as well as inter-sectoral linkages in the updated INEE Minimum Standards Handbook. The renewed Agreement further strengthens the collaboration between the two entities at all levels, including the Sphere Board and the INEE Steering Group. To access the full Agreement, click here.
The Sphere Project was created to improve the quality and accountability of disaster response. It promotes the universal right of all disaster-affected people to life with dignity, protection and humanitarian assistance. The Sphere Project's Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response represents sector-wide consensus on minimum standards, key technical indicators and guidance covering four life-saving areas of humanitarian aid: water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion; food security and nutrition; shelter, settlement and non-food items; and health action.
The INEE Minimum Standards Handbook is an expression of commitment that all individuals - children, youth and adults - have a right to education during emergencies. The Standards articulate the minimum level of educational quality and access in emergencies through to recovery.
For more information about The Sphere Project and its Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response, visit http://www.sphereproject.org. For more information on the INEE Minimum Standards for Education: Preparedness, Response, Recovery, visit http://www.ineesite.org/standards.To learn more about the INEE-Sphere Project Companionship, visit INEE's website. To access tools on education and inter-sectoral linkages, visit the INEE Toolkit. To share how you have used the INEE Minimum Standards Handbook and the Sphere Handbook, please contact Tzvetomira Laub at tzvetomira@ineesite.org and Aninia Nadig at aninia.nadig@ifrc.org.
Evidence shows that learning to read at an early age is one of the strongest indicators that a person will develop the skills they need to lead a healthy life, earn a productive salary, and contribute positively to the economic growth of a community. Yet millions of students today are finishing primary school without being able to read basic words. We need game-changing solutions that increase the availability and effectiveness of literacy teaching and learning materials and that improve education data for accountability and smarter decision-making. The opportunity before us has never been more clear: We need to harness the creative, practical, and inventive powers of the crowd- yes, that's you- to generate significantly better results for children. Here's how you can participate today.
1) Submit your idea to address childhood literacy by applying for the challenge. Applications will be accepted through January 31st at 2 pm EST/19:00 GMT. Visit http://www.allchildrenreading.org/apply to learn about the application guidelines and eligibility requirements. You can download the Request for Applications (RFA) with full guidelines here. We have also attached a brief overview of the RFA (please use the entire RFA to guide your submissions). Organizations with winning submissions will be eligible for as much as $300,000, provided by USAID, AusAID, and World Vision.
The competition is open for submissions now until January 31st at 2pm EST/ 19:00 GMT
2) Spread the word about the All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development competition! And encourage people to submit! Don't be shy. Share the challenge website and mission with your friends, families, media contacts, and colleagues via Facebook, Twitter (#allchildrenreading, #usaid), other social networking sites, your university connections, and regular community outlets. Your network may include people and organizations who can help us to achieve better results together.
A quality education is the cornerstone of every child’s rights, yet across the developing world millions of children’s futures are stunted because they don’t have the opportunity to learn. UNICEF is addressing this deprivation with an innovative approach that aims to remove barriers to success in primary school by giving preschoolers the knowledge to successfully enter first grade. Called ‘Getting Ready for School: a Child-to-Child Approach’, the programme is a low-cost way to provide supplemental education to preschoolers, especially the most marginalized.
We asked UNICEF education staff around the globe to tell us about their most inspiring moment they experienced in 2011. Something that they would not forget and reminded them why they chose this profession. Here are some of their stories.
Elena Duro
Education Specialist
UNICEF Argentina
One of the most moving and motivating experiences this year was a visit to an indigenous rural school in the province of Salta, located at an altitude of 3,500 metres. There are many difficulties with regard to access in this area.
Arriving at the school after a long journey, we shared breakfast with children who had walked for hours through the mountains to get there. We spoke with teachers and principals who make daily sacrifices to provide these children with not only a quality education but also affection, comfort and shelter – this really inspired and motivated my daily work.
That school is one of 1,500 around the country participating in an educational quality self-evaluation programme. This participatory and democratic methodology, developed by UNICEF in partnership with provincial governments, instills an evaluation culture in schools (both primary and secondary) and has the main objective of increasing inclusiveness and quality of education.
John Ekaju
Education Specialist
UNICEF Afghanistan
I visited a Jogi community school in Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan with colleagues from the education section and Save the Children. This minority group is excluded from mainstream society as well as formal schools because of their cultural and linguistic background. Negative stereotypes and biases that have existed for generations have led to extreme discrimination and disadvantage.
Jogi children don’t have Afghani citizenship or birth certificates, rendering them stateless in their own country. Because of discrimination and derogatory language, they are forced not to attend regular government schools.
UNICEF, in partnership with Save the Children, initiated classes for these communities in Mazar-i-Sharif. The special classes provided an opportunity for the children to learn with a renewed sense of self-esteem and confidence. They are excited to come to their own school, where they do not face prejudice and discrimination. The young volunteer teacher we met was trained in pedagogy by UNICEF and Save the Children, thus ensuring that the classroom was interactive and the children enjoyed the learning experience.
A recent qualitative survey organized by UNICEF revealed signs of an emerging Jogi identity, with an increasing awareness about their rights and a growing, if still limited, assertiveness in denouncing the discrimination they suffer. I am excited to be part of this drive to advocate for these children, who are the hope for the future generation of this great country.
Low-lying Bangladesh is one of the countries most affected by climate change, and the people who live in the Chars – small islands created by floods or erosion in the vast Ganges delta—are the most vulnerable of all.
Life on Natwarpara Char is extremely difficult. Most families make a living from growing rice or fishing. There is little economic development and few employment opportunities.
“There is no electricity, no services. There are no good schools, people don’t want to live here; there are no real advantages to living in the Char,” said primary school teacher Farida Yasmin.
The one thing people in the Char can rely on are floods.
“Every year there is a flood. Some years the floods are worse than others,” said Natwarpara Primary School Principal Mohammad Monwarul Islam Mukta.
He heads a school of about 170 students who, thanks to UNICEF’s support, are all well versed in how to deal with frequent emergencies.
“I was very scared during the floods. There was water everywhere. My whole family was worried. Where would we stay? What would we eat?” said student Farzana Tarafder Nishi.
Fortunately Farzana, 10, who is a star student, had a safe space—her school. It was re-situated and is now able to stay open during emergencies. She did not miss a day of school, even though her village was inundated.
The UNICEF-supported Education in Emergencies and Post-Crisis Transition programme, also known as Back on Track, is an innovative programme designed to rebuild education systems, often in countries working to make the transition from crisis to normal development.
The five-year programme is funded by the Government of the Netherlands and the European Commission.
Back on Track also provides comprehensive instruction on disaster risk reduction, so students and teachers know how to stay safe during emergencies. The lessons are laid out in a book published by UNICEF and Save the Children.
“The book is called Tuni’s Rooster. I have learned from it that the school should be on higher ground. There should be a boat to ferry school children and the school should have a proper toilet and tubewell,” said student Tasmia Yasmin Trishti.
In 2011, significant strides were made in improving the education of children around the world: More children are now enrolled in primary schools than ever before. Still, in spite of remarkable progress, civil unrest and natural disasters have slowed down improvements in affected areas.
To wrap up the year, UNICEF podcast moderator Femi Oke spoke to United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Kishore Singh.
Pre-school is a luxury in most of Bangladesh, where fewer than 23 per cent of children aged 3 to 5 receive any type of early childhood education.
Chinipara is no exception.
“We live in a remote area. We have a lot of poverty here. All the students are children of day labourers and farmers,” Chinipara Primary School assistant teacher Sarkar Faruk Shana.
For Mr. Islam, the chance to see his daughter step onto the education ladder, even before primary school, is very satisfying. “When I was a child I had wanted to study,” he said. “In 1985, there was a drought in this area, and since we were poor I had to start working in the fields at a young age.”
Jake Scobey-Thal is an associate in the Asia division at Human Rights Watch.
INEE and The Sphere Project are pleased to announce that the Companionship Agreement between the two entities has been renewed. The Agreement recognizes the INEE Minimum Standards as Companion and Complementary Standards to the Sphere Project's Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response. The continued use of the INEE Minimum Standards alongside the Sphere Standards will help to ensure that crucial linkages between education and traditional sectors are made at the outset of an emergency - through contingency planning, multi-sectoral needs assessments and holistic response. Used together, the two good practices tools help improve the quality of humanitarian assistance, enhance the predictability and accountability of disaster preparedness and response, and improve coordination among humanitarian actors.
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