Education Under Attack - Voices from the Field: Segment #3 in a series on Education in Emergencies

Providing education to children in regions and societies affected by conflict - or emerging from it - is a major challenge. Yet communities in conflict-affected areas consistently rank education as a high priority. And they demonstrate astounding resourcefulness and resilience in seeking out and providing schooling for their children. In Iraq, as in many other conflict zones, schools may be targets of violence and must operate in increasingly tense security situations. "Examinations that took place recently saw, for the first time, a decline in the number of children who sat for the exam and, further, those who were able to pass," said Geeta Verma, speaking of Iraq last week during a discussion about the role of education in countries affected by conflict or natural disaster. "The learning levels are going down rapidly, which means that the quality of education is in rapid decline," she added. "In Southern Sudan, you find that - the adult literacy rates are very low, the lowest in the world," said Sibeso Luswata, noting the challenges of working in an area that recently emerged from conflict. Paul Martin cited the difficulty of providing education to vulnerable and excluded children in middle-income countries such as Colombia - especially in remote areas. "The problem is - particularly acute in Colombia because of the situation of violence, which is affecting large areas but not all of the country at once," he said. "A lot of the problems in those isolated areas are quite similar to the things that have been described in Sudan and in Iraq."