While Pakistan already faces major challenges to education such as low access, low enrollment, gender bias and poor infrastructure, militant violence has disrupted education of hundreds of thousands of children even more.Militant groups have destroyed schools, attacked teachers and thus pressurised parents into keeping their children out of school. Such incidents have not just harmed students and their families, but are also causing devastating effects on Pakistani society, a Human Rights Watch report said. The militants use attacks on schools and universities to sow intolerance and isolation, target government installments and affect the education of girls. The report Dreams Turned into Nightmares is based on interviews of 48 people including pupils, parents and schools administrations in Punjab, Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and aims to document attacks that took place between 2007 and late 2016.Some 867 attacks on the country’s schools took place between 2007 and 2015, causing 392 deaths and 724 injuries, according to Global Terrorism Database.
According to Global Coalition to Protect Education, at least 838 schools were targeted from 2009 to 2012, resulting in the deaths of 30 students and injuries to 97 others.The data indicated that militant attack since 2012 claimed hundreds of lives.The violence and insecurity has compounded other barriers for female students. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), after taking over in Swat in 2009, began a violent campaign against education for girls, forcing 900 schools to close. This situation forced more than 120,000 students and 8,000 female teachers to stop attending school.The state has adopted enhanced security measures following the attack on Army Public School in 2014, such as training teachers in use of arms, holding mock drills and raising boundary walls.The federal and provincial governments need to adopt a systematic approach towards the protection of education. This should include prioritising education for girls, their schools and teachers.Moreover, endorsing the Safe Schools Declaration, a non-binding political agreement opened for state support at an international conference in Oslo, Norway in May 2015, can help restore access to education when schools are attacked. This makes it less likely that students, teachers, and schools will be attacked in the first place.In the past, our authorities have responded to reports by international rights watchdogs in a knee-jerk fashion. HRW’s report makes for a mandatory reading for the executive officials and the parliament. Some of the recommendations are worth noting and we endorse them. The government must formulate ‘a comprehensive policy’ for protecting students, teachers, schools, and universities from such attacks. Local education authorities need to be a part of this strategy. Passing on responsibility for security to school administrations is unwise and ironically some teachers and principals are being prosecuted for inadequate security while the terrorists are roaming free. Bureaucrats and politicians are in the habit of citing resource constraints when it comes to social services such as education. An advance rapid response system is needed whereby schools are quickly rehabilitated after attacks. Reconstruction of a school cannot be an excuse of depriving kids of education.
