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Failure to protect education in conflict zones undermines our security

June 22, 2017 at 5:01 pm

Image of Maleiha Malik

Protecting schools in conflict zones is crucial to our efforts in building peace and prosperity across the Middle East and deterring people from future conflicts and extremism, Professor of Law, Maleiha Malik, tells MEMO on World Refugee Week.

The author and lecturer advocates for an internationally recognised set of standards in protecting education facilities in conflict zones and the different ways to increase provision.

Malik, who is also an executive director of Protect Education in Insecurity and Conflict (PEIC) for Education Above All Foundation (EAA), told MEMO about the global campaign, which has taken her to various conflict zones in Middle East and Africa to promote an international legal framework that protects children, teachers and schools in countries ravaged by war.

Explaining the pressing need to protect institutions of learning in conflict zones, Malik says war can no longer be seen as a liner process. Some parts of the world have endured conflict for decades; a fact which Malik says forces us to rethink the way we think about war.

The traditional view, which assumes that we can implement educational programmes once fighting has ended does not work

The typical development model puts education low on the list of priorities, viewing reduction of violence, ceasefire and the return of security as a precondition to education provisions.

“The international community,” says Malik “needs to find an approach that protects education during times of conflict.” Malik explains that the protection of education during conflict is the best guarantor of long term peace as well as ensuring that communities do not fall back into a state of conflict.

Protecting education and working towards peace should go hand in hand.

This reality points to a basic weakness in international law, which rightly offers legal protection to hospitals and an umbrella of security over other essential provisions, but it fails to extend this legal protection to schools, Malik explains, highlighting the EAA initiative Safe School Declaration.

She believes that if more countries signed up to the Safe School Declaration programme it would have a positive effect for everyone. Comparing conflict resolution to firefighting, Malik observs that conflict prevention is better than conflict resolution; the net benefit of prevention programmes is not just to the immediate community but to the rest of the world, where we have seen that violence in one part of the world spreads into other countries. In the modern world violence can no longer be contained, Malik adds.

Despite broad international law requiring parties in armed conflicts to spare civilians the hazards of war – as much as possible – the lack of explicit standards or norms protecting schools and universities from use in support of the military effort means that fighting forces often make use of such institutions for various purposes.

Armed forces use schools for military purposes, with devastating consequences for children and their right to education. Forces have converted schools into barracks, detention facilities, military training camps, weapons depots and bases for military operations. Often, forces take over only part of a school, putting students attempting to continue their studies at grave risk. The proposed guidelines, which have been drawn up over the past six years, aim to reduce the use of schools and universities for military porpoise.

Some 66 countries, including France and Canada, have endorsed the declaration, and its main proponents are optimistic that more countries will sign on once the document has gone through further review and consultation.

The campaign to garner support for the declaration also needs to go hand in hand with maintaining, if not increasing, existing provisions in supporting education in conflict zones, Malik explains. It is crucial that governments in the West resist the temptation to cut parts of their aid budget that are used to support education in areas where there is chronic insecurity and conflict.

We need to carry on making the argument that investing in education will make a difference to our security in the world

Malik said.

In her recent article, the professor asks: “what becomes of children who are denied their right to education? Where do they go?” This is of particular important today as we have “the highest levels of forced displacement that have ever been recorded”.

Malik points out that usually the children end up either in poverty or face other barriers. “When children learn with tolerance and logic, they are given the tools to think independently and critically about ideas they are presented with… this makes them less vulnerable to those who seek to use them for political, religious and violent ends.”

Asserting the need to support education during conflict, she adds that it isn’t something that should be seen as just a “bonus – something to strive for once food, water and shelter have been secured – it is essential, and must be part of crisis-planning from the outset.”