Widespread rape and other sexual violence are depriving millions of children of an education in conflict-affected countries, UNESCO’s 2011 Global Monitoring Report warns.
The report, “The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education,” calls for an end to the culture of impunity surrounding sexual violence, with strengthened monitoring of human rights violations affecting education, a more rigorous application of existing international law and the creation of an International Commission on Rape and Sexual Violence, backed by the International Criminal Court.
The international courts set up in the wake of the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the genocide in Rwanda have firmly established rape and other sexual violence as war crimes, yet these acts remain widely deployed weapons of war.
Of the rapes reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), one-third involved children (and 13% are against children under the age of 10). Unreported rape in conflict-affected areas of in the east of the country may be 10 to 20 times the reported level. That would translate into 130,000 to 260,000 incidents in 2009 alone.
In the report, 15-year-old Minova from South Kivu province in DRC describes her experience. “I was just coming back from the river to fetch water. … Two soldiers came up to me and told me that if I refuse to sleep with them, they will kill me. They beat me and ripped my clothes. One of the soldiers raped me. …My parents spoke to a commander and he said that his soldiers do not rape, and that I am lying. I recognized the two soldiers, and I know that one of them is called Edouard.”
Sexual violence damages education on many levels. Girls subjected to rape often experience grave physical injury – with long-term consequences for school attendance. The psychological effects, including depression, trauma, shame and withdrawal, have devastating consequences for learning. Many girls drop out of school after rape because of unwanted pregnancy, unsafe abortion and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV and AIDS, as well as other forms of ill health, trauma, displacement or stigma.
Robbing children of a secure home environment and traumatizing the communities that they live in profoundly impairs prospects for learning. Sexual violence creates a wider atmosphere of insecurity that leads to a decline in the number of girls able to attend school.
Many countries that have emerged from violent conflict – including Guatemala and Liberia – continue to report elevated levels of rape and sexual violence, suggesting that practices that emerge during violent conflict become socially ingrained. While the majority of victims are girls and women, boys and men are at risk in some countries.
The report describes monitoring systems for rape and other sexual violence as among the weakest in the international system with United Nations agencies and others relying on a fragmented and often anecdotal body of evidence.
The report calls for change on four major fronts:
- An International Commission on Rape and Sexual Violence should be established to document the scale of the problem, identify perpetrators and assess government responses. The Under-Secretary-General for UN Women should head the commission, with national review exercises coordinated through the Office of the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict.
- All governments in conflict-affected states should be called upon to develop national plans for curtailing sexual violence, drawing on best practices. Donors and United Nations agencies should coordinate efforts to back these plans.
- Strengthen United Nations coordination to combat sexual violence. The United Nations Entity on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women — UN Women — should be mandated, resourced and equipped to coordinate action across the United Nations system and oversee enforcement of Security Council resolutions.
- The International Criminal Court could play a far more active role in enforcing Security Council Resolutions, and could inform United Nations, regional and national efforts to document levels of rape and other sexual violence, establish benchmarks for combating impunity, provide training, and strengthen the role of women in local and national leadership positions.
Mary Robinson, co-chair of the Civil Society Advisory Group to the UN on Women, Peace and Security, writes in the report: “Children living with the psychological trauma, the insecurity, the stigma, and the family and community breakdown that comes with rape are not going to realize their potential in school.
That is why it is time for the Education for All community to engage more actively on human rights advocacy aimed at ending what the UN Secretary-General has described as “our collective failure” to protect those lives destroyed by sexual violence.” The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education, cautions that the world is not on track to achieve by 2015 the six Education for All goals that over 160 countries signed up to in 2000. Although there has been progress in many areas, most of the goals will be missed by a wide margin – and conflict is one of the major reasons.
The report is endorsed by four Nobel Peace Prize laureates: Oscar Arias Sánchez, Shirin Ebadi, José Ramos-Horta and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Introducing the report, Archbishop Tutu says: “It documents in stark detail the sheer brutality of the violence against some of the world’s most vulnerable people, including its schoolchildren, and it challenges world leaders of all countries, rich and poor, to act decisively.” Of the total number of primary school age children in the world who do not attend school, 42% – 28 million – live in poor countries affected by conflict.[ad#Adsense-200by200sq]
