HRW: ‘Children have lost years of education’
DAKAR: Some 20 percent of schools in the Central African Republic are not functioning, and students’ and teachers’ lives are threatened as armed groups have looted, occupied and damaged the properties in the country, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.
UN peacekeepers have also occupied schools or set up bases nearby in the Central African Republic, the rights group added.
“We are talking about a lost generation. These are students (who) are not going to get those years back,” said Lewis Mudge, the group’s Africa researcher and coauthor of the report.
“Many rebels have also been quite open that they are going to reoccupy schools during the upcoming rainy season.”
The Central African Republic has been beset by violence between mainly Muslim Seleka rebels and Christian anti-balaka militias since the rebels ousted the thenpresident in early 2013.
Both groups have occupied, looted and damaged schools during the conflict, according to HRW.
Yet in two cases, one as recently as January this year, the UN peacekeeping mission also used schools as bases — defying the mission’s own directive that its peacekeepers must “not use schools for any purpose,” HRW said in the report.
“These occupations by MINUSCA sends out a contradictory message given that they have been stepping up efforts to clear out schools occupied by armed groups,” Lewis Mudge, Africa researcher at HRW, said by phone.
MINUSCA said its peacekeepers briefly occupied two schools in late 2016 and early this year in the west and center of the country while carrying out operations to protect civilians. “On both occasions, once the leadership knew about the peacekeepers’ presence, instructions were given for the immediate vacation of those places (schools),” Vladimir Monteiro, MINUSCA’s spokesman, said in response to the HRW report.
Around a fifth of schools across the country are closed, and one in three children are not in class, with displacement, a lack of teachers, and insecurity to blame, UN agencies say.
While MINUSCA has made progress in clearing schools by militias, fighters sometimes stay near school grounds, leaving teachers and pupils too afraid to return, according to HRW.
The use of schools as bases by armed groups could ramp up in the coming months as militants look for shelter during the rainy season, Mudge said.
“Children have lost years of education in many parts of the country because armed groups have failed to treat schools as places of learning and sanctuary,” he added.
“If more is not done, we may be looking at the potential of a lost generation.”
One student in Ngadja in Ouaka province told HRW that he feared for his life after rebels occupied a nearby school on and off for more than two years.
The rebels for months used the school director’s office as a prison, teachers in Ngadja told the rights group.
Violent clashes are spreading in the Central African Republic among dozens of armed factions despite successful polls that elected a new government last year, raising hopes for stability.