Education in Emergencies & Conflict

The COVID-19 pandemic and the responses of States thereto have had a very significant impact on the enjoyment of a wide range of social rights. The Council of Europe’s European Social Charter provides a framework for the measures that must be taken by States Parties to cope with the pandemic as it unfolds. The treaty also provides a necessary framework for the post-pandemic social and economic recovery as well as for preparation for and responses to possible future crises of this nature.

At the end of 2019, at least 13.4 million school-age children (5-17 years old) were internally displaced due to conflict or violence. These numbers are likely an underestimate with many internally displaced children unaccounted for due to lack of data. The periods of internal displacement are becoming longer, with years becoming decades and internally displaced children spending the majority of their school-years displaced. The majority of these children do not have access to quality, safe and inclusive education due to discrimination, financial, legal, and insecurity barriers.

While data on attacks on education has become more widely available thanks to better awareness and efforts by national and international organizations and monitoring bodies, critical data gaps remain. Reporting systems may be absent, weak, or disconnected from effective responses to attacks on education. Monitors, as well as victims and witnesses, may face threats to their safety, or insecurity may prevent monitors from accessing areas where attacks occur. As such, many attacks and incidents of military use go unreported, undermining efforts to calculate their prevalence.

Efforts to secure inclusive and equitable education for all have prompted calls for greater engagement by the private sector, asserting that businesses and foundations can play significant roles as partners in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4).

The Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE, by its Spanish acronym) is a pluralistic network of civil society organizations with a presence in 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, which promotes social mobilization and political advocacy to defend the human right to education.

This paper outlines the rationale for focusing new attention on the educational needs of young children living in fragile conditions is strong: there is a broad body of scientific evidence; the international legal framework of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child asserts that all children have the right to health, education, legal registration, and protection from violence and separation from parents, beginning at birth; and the Sustainable Development Goals for all will be not reached without a focus on th

The Djibouti Declaration of the Regional Ministerial Conference on Refugee Education is a non binding legal instrument produced by the IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development) in 2017, it has eight member states: Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and Eritrea. 

This report highlights the right to education in Iraq and different barriers that iraqis and internally displaced persons are facing to access education. It put a particular emphasis on the legacy of ISIL territorial control on access to education.

This report, produced by Mwatana for Human Rights (Mwatana), examines attacks on and impacting schools and education facilities between March 2015 and December 2019 by the warring parties in Yemen. The report does not cover many other attacks and abuses that have killed, wounded and otherwise harmed school- age children during the conflict, which have ranged from airstrikes that have killed or wounded dozens of young children, to recruitment and use of school-age children across Yemen