Videos

Around the world, armies and rebel groups are taking over schools and universities, turning safe places of learning into places of war. In classrooms, soldiers sleep and store weapons. In school offices, they detain and torture suspects. Playgrounds become training grounds. School grounds become battlegrounds.

This video is to accompany the End Military Use of Schools Campaign (EMUS) led by Human Rights Watch Student Task Force, Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division and Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack.

This video presents the work of the Education Cluster and the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE). The vision of both bodies is to enable all children and young people to have immediate access or ensured continuity to a quality education in a safe environment, in order to protect, develop and facilitate a return to normality and stability.

The government of Malawi should increase efforts to end widespread child and forced marriage, or risk worsening poverty, illiteracy, and preventable maternal deaths in the country.
According to government statistics, half of the girls in Malawi will be married by their 18th birthday, with some as young as age 9 or 10 being forced to marry. Malawi faces many economic challenges, but the rights of girls and women, including the right to education, should not be sacrificed as a result.

In this video, David Archer explaines how right to education indicators have been applied in Nepal, where local communities have used the resource pack "Promoting Rights in School" to monitor the right to education through a participatory method.

Attaining primary and secondary school education for girls in Liberia remains a major challenge. Girls aged below 10 years are pulled out of formal education, by traditionalists, and forced to take part in traditional female initiation ceremonies in informal settings locally known as bush schools. As a consequence, nearly half of women in Liberia are illiterate, according to United Nations statistics.

In Mozambique, 14% of children between two and nine years old are disabled. They are often hidden away by their families – in effect rendered invisible – and are vulnerable to discrimination as well as an increased risk of violence. These children need greater support from their families and better access to education, which would enable them to attend school with their peers. But that can only happen if the necessary facilities, equipment and training are provided.

Deaf children have a right to a quality education, like all other children, in a language and environment that maximises their potential. In this video, in conjunction with a global conference in Sydney on equality for deaf people, Human Rights Watch shows some of the challenges faced by deaf children and young people, and the opportunities sign language education offers them.