Attacks on education in the wake of war are increasing worldwide

This report was authored by a partner organization, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, and is distributed by Human Rights Watch.

(New York) – There were approximately 6,000 attacks on education in 2022 and 2023, an increase of nearly 20 percent compared to the previous two years, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) said today in its new report, Education under Attack 2024. These attacks, which took place in the context of armed conflicts around the world, harmed, injured or killed more than 10,000 students, teachers and academics.

The GCPEA researchers found that the highest number of attacks on educational institutions over the past two years occurred in Palestine, Ukraine and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In each of these countries, hundreds of schools were threatened, looted, burned, improvised explosive devices, or hit by artillery or air strikes. Attacks increased in Palestine, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine, while the GCPEA found declining trends in the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali and Mozambique.

“In places like Gaza, it is not just the loss of life that is a problem, but education itself,” said Lisa Chung Bender, executive director of GCPEA. “School and university systems have been closed and in some cases completely destroyed. This will have long-term consequences for social and economic recovery, as the very infrastructure necessary for peace and stability has been targeted.”

In addition to deaths and injuries, attacks on education damaged or destroyed hundreds of educational facilities, leading to temporary or permanent closures and classes being cancelled for weeks or months. Some students also suffered psychological damage as a result of the attacks or were afraid to return to school, the coalition found. Girls and students with disabilities were particularly hard hit by attacks on education, as both groups had greater difficulty returning to school after the attacks.

The researchers recorded over 475 attacks on schools in Palestine in 2023, many of which were air and ground attacks using explosive weapons. The attacks peaked after the escalation of hostilities in October, when Hamas-led fighters launched a large-scale attack on Israel and Israeli forces conducted an intense military offensive in the Gaza Strip. The attacks continued into 2024; in Gaza, all universities and over 80 percent of schools had been damaged or destroyed by April, according to the Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster.

Explosive weapons, which were used in about a third of all attacks on educational institutions reported worldwide in 2022 and 2023, had a particularly devastating impact, killing or injuring countless students and teachers and damaging hundreds of schools and universities. For example, shrapnel from an attack on a women’s dormitory at El Geneina University in West Darfur, Sudan, in June 2023 left a woman blind in one eye.

In attacks on educational institutions, armed forces and non-state armed groups bomb and burn schools and universities and kill, injure, rape, kidnap, arrest and recruit students and teachers in or near educational institutions during armed conflict. In some cases, girls’ schools and students are attacked to prevent girls from learning and participating in education. In other cases, schools, students and teachers are subjected to indiscriminate violence or are attacked for political, military, ideological or other reasons.

Military forces and non-state armed groups also occupy schools and universities to use them as barracks, detention centres or shooting ranges, for example. This puts students at risk and violates their right to education. The military use of schools puts educational institutions at increased risk of attack by opposing forces or groups.

Students, teachers and education staff continue to be targeted. In Nigeria, kidnappings of students and teachers continued during the reporting period, although the number of such attacks decreased compared to previous years. In Palestine, Cameroon and Iraq, numerous students and teachers were threatened, kidnapped, injured or killed in 2022 and 2023.

Armed parties to conflict also targeted schools to recruit children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. In Colombia, at least 25 students were recruited in schools or along school routes in 2022 and 2023, many of them indigenous students. Armed forces, security forces or armed groups were also reportedly responsible for sexual violence in or on the way to or from schools and universities in at least eight countries, including Cameroon, Niger and South Sudan.

Attacks on schools accounted for more than half of all attacks on educational institutions and military use reported by the coalition. Ukraine and Palestine were the hardest hit. There were about 700 attacks on schools in Ukraine between 2022 and 2023 and at least 640 in Palestine, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burkina Faso and Yemen. Following the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, airstrikes, artillery shelling and drone strikes damaged schools, including those for blind students. The east and south of Ukraine were particularly affected.

Military use of schools and universities by armed forces and non-state armed groups increased significantly in 2022 and 2023. The coalition found over 1,000 reports of occupied schools or universities in 30 countries, representing an increase in both the number of incidents and the contexts affected. Compared to Education under Attack 2022, which included about 570 such cases, increases were reported in Afghanistan, Colombia, Nigeria, Sudan, and elsewhere.

University buildings, students and academics have also come under attack in the past two years, with over 360 incidents reported. A quarter of the reported attacks targeted university facilities, while the rest targeted students and staff. About 760 university students and staff were injured, abducted or killed, while over 1,700 were detained or arrested.

GCPEA researchers also found initial links between climate change and attacks on education. In Burkina Faso and Mali, for example – where desertification, soil erosion and conflict are intertwined in complex ways – armed groups have attacked school cafeterias and canteens to loot food stores.

By May 2024, 120 countries signed the Safe Schools Declaration, a political commitment to protect education in armed conflict. By signing the declaration, countries commit to taking concrete steps to protect education, including complying with international humanitarian law and human rights law and applying the Guiding Principles on Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use During Armed Conflict. In line with the declaration, governments and their partners have made concrete improvements in law and practice, for example by issuing military orders to prohibit the use of schools by armed forces for military purposes.

“On average, eight attacks on education have been recorded every day over the past two years. This means that a shocking number of students have been unable to pursue their dreams of learning or develop the skills that an education promises,” said Jerome Marston, senior researcher at GCPEA. “Schools should be safe havens, not targets. This is why all governments should support the Safe Schools Declaration.”