Education for All UNESCO Global Monitoring Report 2011 THE HIDDEN CRISIS: ARMED CONFLICT & EDUCATION

This year's EFA Global Monitoring Report provides a timely reminder of the history, the ideas and the values on which the United Nations is built. Those values are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. They are also reflected in the Education for All goals adopted by the international community in 2000. Unfortunately, we are still a great distance from the world envisaged by the architects of the Universal Declaration – and from our shared goals in education. And we are collectively failing to confront the immense challenges posed by armed conflict.

Some of the key messages to be found in the report are: The combination of a ‘youth bulge' and failures in education represent a risk of conflict; The wrong type of education can fuel violent conflict; Aid effectiveness has been compromised by the national security agenda of major donors; The humanitarian aid system is failing children caught up in conflict; The international aid system is not equipped to exploit opportunities for peace and reconstruction; National governments and the international community are failing to uphold human rights. State and non-state parties involved in armed conflict are targeting school children, teachers, civilians and schools with almost total impunity. This is especially true where rape and other forms of sexual violence are concerned. EFA stakeholders should act as a far more forceful advocate for human rights.

The comprehensive scope of international human rights provisions for children and other civilians in conflict-affected countries ought to afford a high level of protection. If the principles underpinning these provisions were as widely enforced as they are endorsed, the attacks on children and schools documented in Chapter 3 would rapidly diminish.
Yet the letter and the spirit of human rights protection are widely violated. In no other area is the scale of violation, or the weakness of enforcement, more evident than in gender-based violence. In September 2010, the Secretary-General candidly acknowledged that, ten years after the adoption of Resolution 1325 on sexual violence against women, ‘significant achievements are difficult to identify or quantify'. That assessment could be extended to the wider body of provisions on the protection of children and civilians, confronting the international community with the challenge of converting principles and norms into tangible results.