05/28/2019
Education under attack: Six portraits
https://www.unicef.org/stories/education-under-attack-six-portraits
Shattered glass. Rubble from shell-smashed ceilings strewn across floors. Walls pockmarked by bullets. These rooms are no place for a child. Except, they are supposed to be. Because they are classrooms, or what is left of them. Around the world, attacks on children continue unabated, as warring parties flout one of the most basic rules of war: the…, “I can’t stand the fighting”: Ehsanullah, Afghanistan, Ehsanullah, 11, stands in a classroom totally destroyed in the fight between anti-government elements and the US forces in 2007 Ehsanullah is one of nine children, but the only one attending school right now. He usually helps his father on the farm after school, meaning that there’s little time for him to play with his friends. Ehsanullah lives in…, “Our school was burned, destroyed”: Kayenat, Afghanistan, Afghanistan. A girl sits in a community based education tent. Kayenat says her family fled intense fighting in the Shinwar district of Nangarhar province, in eastern Afghanistan, two years ago. “Our school was burned, destroyed,” she says. By the time they left, though, Kayenat couldn’t attend classes anyway. “Girls weren’t allowed to go to school…, “I want to be a kindergarten teacher”: Diana, Ukraine, Diana Fedorchenko, 14, at the last government checkpoint in Bakhmutka, Donetsk region. Thousands of miles away, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, lives Diana, 14. Her home is near the so-called contact line, which divides government and non-government areas and where fighting is the most severe. She has to pass through a checkpoint to get to school, or…, “I want to be a coal miner”: Yura, Ukraine, Yura Khromchenko, 9, stands in the classroom that took a direct hit from a shell Like Diana, Yura, who lives in the town of Novotoshkivske, is also pretty set on his future plans. “I want to be a coal miner,” he says, explaining that his dad is getting ready to start work at a nearby mine. Yura says he enjoys English class and computer studies.…, “I felt lik, e I’d never be able to achieve my dreams”: Bintu, Nigeria, Bintu Mohammed, 13, stands in her home in Banki, in northeast Nigeria. Bintu has seen for herself the devastating impact that conflict has on education – and the hope that school can offer. She lives in the town of Banki, in northeast Nigeria, southeast of the Borno state capital of Maiduguri. Fighting has decimated Banki’s infrastructure. The…, “If I don’t come back to teach, who will?”: Hawa, Nigeria, Hawa,12, stands in Sabo Garawi Primary School in Gwoza, in northeast Nigeria. Like Bintu, Hawa also lives in northeast Nigeria. And like Bintu, she couldn’t be clearer about the connection between education and a more hopeful future. Hawa fled her hometown of Gwoza at the bottom of the Mandara Mountains when it was captured by militants in 2014.…