Just last week, 59 or more boys were shot, stabbed and set on fire as they slept in their college dormitory in Northern Nigeria. An extremist group, Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is a sin”, is believed to be responsible. That’s just the latest in shocking attacks on schools all across the world. The Global Partnership for Education’s Board of Directors sharply condemned the attack in a statement.

In March last year when teachers in Meiktila, Myanmar, heard that a mob of 200 Buddhist nationalists was marching towards their school, they hid their students in a nearby patch of bush. But the mob torched the school, found the students and clubbed them with staves, and in some cases poured petrol on them and set them alight. They also decapitated one of them.

The plight of Pakistani school girl, Malala Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban in 2012 after campaigning for girls’ education, shocked the world.

A new study shows she is just one of many thousands of students, teachers, academics, education staff and education trade unionists targeted with violence around the globe in the past five years – including 32 students and four teachers killed in the incident at Meiktila.

Study finds attacks on education are shockingly widespread

The study, “Education under Attack 2014,” is published by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack, which I direct, and documents incidents in 2009-2013.

The study found that worldwide, schools had been damaged or destroyed by attacks ranging from air strikes to bombings, burnings, looting and use for military purposes. Hundreds of thousands of students have been denied the right to an education as a result.

The study also shows that the problem is much greater than previously documented in two similar studies published by UNESCO in 2007 and 2010.  It is not clear whether this reflects an actual increase in attacks or the fact that the Global Coalition’s study is the most comprehensive so far, or that reporting of such attacks has increased.

The study identified attacks on education in 70 countries in 2009-2013, including 30 countries in which there was evidence of a pattern of attacks or military use.

The most dangerous countries for students and teachers

It singles out six very heavily affected countries – Afghanistan, Colombia, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Syria – where reports documented 1,000 or more incidents of attacks on schools, universities, staff and students or education facilities used for military purposes. There were 1,000 or more victims of attacks who were students, teachers or other education personnel in 2009-2012. In seven heavily affected countries –Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Libya, Mexico and Yemen – there were between 500 and 999 reported attacks, victims or affected facilities in the same period.

One of the countries most affected by direct attacks on schools was Malala’s homeland, Pakistan, where at least 838 schools were deliberately attacked in 2009-2012, mostly involving the blowing up of buildings.

Perhaps the most dangerous country to be a teacher was Colombia where 140 teachers were assassinated and at least 1,038 teachers received death threats in 2009-2012, according to the Ministry of Education. The main teachers’ union, FECODE, reported 5,000 teachers receiving death threats in 2011-2012 alone.

Attacks on schools is an attack on the right to education

Where attacks are persistent they can have a devastating effect on efforts to provide good quality education for all – causing students to drop out of school and teachers to quit the profession out of fear, and leaving schools damaged or destroyed. The impact can last for years if governments lack the capacity or will to rebuild schools quickly. 

The Global Coalition is calling for urgent action to protect education from attack, including by urging states and armed groups to endorse the Lucens Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict. These Guidelines provide clear rules for significantly limiting the use of schools and universities for military purposes – as barracks, bases or firing positions – which puts them at increased risk of being attacked by opposing forces. It is a major step that can be taken to make schools and universities safe zones in the midst of conflict.