Thousands of students and teachers abducted in Nepal in 5 years: UNESCO report

A report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has revealed that the latter part of Nepal's insurgency saw a massive scale of abduction of students and teachers.

The UNESCO study on the impact of conflict on education, which was made public on Thursday, said that as many as 22,000 students and 10,000 teachers were abducted between 2002 and 2006 in Nepal while 734 teachers and 1,730 students were arrested or tortured during that period.

Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Nepal, the Palestinian territories, Thailand and Zimbabwe are some of the most conflict-affected nations listed in the UNESCO report.

The UNESCO report catalogues a range of assaults on education in the conflict zones: students taken hostage, targeted by bombs or abducted to work as child soldiers; teachers assassinated in school; the blasting of schools with shells and rockets or their use as military bases; and teacher trade unionists unaccountably disappearing.

The study, which is based on available statistics, finds that 40 per cent of the 77 million students not in school live in conflict-affected areas. Brendan O’Malley, the principal author of the report, noted that the problem, which is difficult to document, could well be more widespread, and called for the establishment of a global system to monitor the situation.

Pointing out that “attacks on educational institutions are a war crime,” the study charts the extent and nature of the violence and suggests actions to address it. Among other measures, it calls for campaigns to end impunity and steps to designate schools as sanctuaries in conflict zones.

“One suggestion is that we create a symbol rather like the Red Cross to denote recognition of this status” protecting educational facilities, O’Malley told reporters in New York. nepalnews.com mk Nov 09 07