Former British prime minister Gordon Brown made a heartfelt appeal on Wednesday for the international community to “wake up” to the crippling threats schoolchildren face in conflict zones.

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UN correspondent

“I want to propose urgent action to deal with what has, even in the early months of 2015, become a growing crisis from Iraq to Nigeria, from South Sudan to Pakistan,” Brown told reporters at the UN. He launched his appeal with a reminder of the more than 200 girls who were snatched from their school in Chibok, Nigeria, almost one year ago, the 140 children who were killed in an attack by militants on their school in Peshawar in December, and the warlord-orchestrated abduction of 89 South Sudanese schoolboys in late February.

There have been more than 10,000 attacks on schools worldwide during the past five years, pushing levels to higher than at any point in the past 40 years, Brown said. “Children’s rights are being violated in a way that has not happened in previous years to the same extent.”

Brown, who is the United Nations Special Envoy for Education, said he felt he is battling a dangerous “ambivalence” among the international community concerning the education sector, which receives a meagre one percent of overall humanitarian aid. “Food, shelter and healthcare keep people alive,” he said. “But it’s education that gives children hope, the possibility that there’s a future worth planning for, the possibility of a return to normality.”

Brown has visited Pakistan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan to study how schools can be better protected from attacks and abductions.

Restoring faith in Pakistan

In Pakistan, Brown is overseeing the rollout of the Safe Schools Initiative in response to a brutal drive by Islamist militants against schoolchildren, especially girls (Malala Yousafzai being the most prominent example). Pakistan suffers the highest rate of attacks on education in the world – some 1,000 schools have been destroyed over the past five years in the Khyber Pakhtunkwa province alone.



The Safe Schools Initiative is set to open 1,000 new schools which will be pre-tested for the impact of a potential blast using simulation technology by PredictifyMe, a US-based company whose chief scientist, Pakistani Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani, was the only of his 13 siblings to receive an education.

Brown said the technology would ensure continued fortification against an attack in every school, besides serving to reassure nervous parents.

Syrians to share Lebanese schools

In Lebanon, where the major concern is some half a million child refugees from neighbouring Syria, Brown said that children could be educated for just $500 USD each per year by using a “double-shift” system, whereby Syrian children would be taught in local schools after their Lebanese peers have finished their classes in the afternoon.

“In Lebanon we’ve got a unique agreement with the government to provide school places for half a million children,” Brown told FRANCE 24. “The teachers are available and the schools are available. What is missing is the international community’s commitment to finance this initiative. We could get these children into school tomorrow.”

Afghanistan, which was once seen as one of the world’s most dangerous places to go to school, especially for girls, is one of few areas that has seen an improvement in recent years, Brown said.

Since 2001 the number of children attending school in Afghanistan has risen to six million, and “a large amount of that improvement came with girls’ education being recognised for the first time,” he told FRANCE 24. “But there are still four million Afghan children out of school, and attacks on schools and the violation of girls’ rights remain huge issues. We know President Ashraf Ghani wants to address these problems, he’s made it a priority of his government to improve educational opportunity, but we also need Safe Schools in the country [like those in Pakistan] and to invest properly.”

‘Whole world’ should be protesting abductions

Brown is worried that international concern for the fates of kidnapped schoolchildren has waned as abductions become more commonplace.

Last month's kidnapping of 89 South Sudanese children as they sat their exams received far less attention than the 2014 kidnapping by Boko Haram of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls, Brown said.

"It’s almost as if we’ve accepted this tactic of kidnapping and abducting children from school as commonplace."

In a crushing show of confidence the group that is holding the 89 boys (Brown didn't name the group) has offered to allow the young teenagers to finish sitting their exams, stipulating that they would have to be returned to work as child soldiers.

The UN believes that 12,000 children were used as child soldiers across South Sudan in 2014.

“It’s sad that 70 years after the universal declaration of human rights we’re having to come to a conference in New York to talk about the basic rights of children,” Brown said. “There is a civil rights struggle underway for the rights of children. We cannot turn our backs on children who are the victims of war.”

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