UNICEF

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN CONFLICT AREAS:

WEST AND CENTRAL AFRICA
My name is Lucia Fiorella Vilela Danjoy. Currently, I am in my third year of
International Relations at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (UPC). I am
passionate about music: in my school days, I had the opportunity to be part of the
symphonic band of my school, I played the soprano clarinet and the bass clarinet. I
have always been fascinated by how diverse languages are. I find captivating the
pads that one can cross with the simple fact of learning a new form of communication.
To this day I can say that I speak three languages: Spanish, English and German.

My tour in the Model United Nations (MUN) world is quite interesting. I started more
than a year ago and have not left this modality of debate since then. Usil MUN School
was my first experience. In my second Model, I was at Universidad Tecnológica del
Perú (UTP) MUN, where I won my first "best delegate"; in this way, I began to perfect
my discussion tools little by little. Recently I was assistant director in HARVARD
MUN in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) committee.

In this debate, I expect a lot of participation from you, as I like hearing everyone's
opinions. Feel free to communicate with me if there is anything you need throughout
the debate and after it. I recommend that you bear your country’s policy in mind
because, for me, it is the most important thing as far as the development of the debate
is concerned.
Lucia Fiorella Vilela Danjoy
Director
[email protected]
Dear delegates, welcome to the 2023 Arequipa MUN!

My name is Isabella Chevarría Morillo. I am 19 years old and am currently studying

law at Universidad Andina in Cusco. It is a true honor to be part of the Model United
Nations (MUN) as the Assistant Director of the committee.

My experience in MUN debates started about 4 years ago, in Gimnasio Vallegrande’s

MUN in Colombia. Since then, I have participated in multiple conferences around the
world and the country itself, whether as a delegate or chair. As a result of my
experience, I have noticed that this type of event can be summed up in a single word:
learning. Why? Because I can firmly say that MUN conferences are extraordinary
opportunities in which you can study the realities of other countries, worldwide issues
and improve your soft skills, such as negotiation and leadership.

In this event we will talk about a topic that, I am convinced, will make the sessions
dynamic and full of solutions. Moreover, never forget that soft skills and diplomacy
are key during your participation during and after the sessions.

Finally, if you have any questions, you can always e-mail us, and we will help you
with any issue you may have. Thank you, and best wishes!

Isabella Chevarría
Assistant Director
[email protected]
Dear delegates, welcome to the 2023 Arequipa MUN.

My name is Paula Torres and for the present occasion, I will be the moderator for the
UNICEF committee. I am a recent high school graduate children’s rights.

1. Respect for children's rights in relation to the environment and land

acquisition.
2. Support children’s rights in security arrangements.
3. Help in the protection of children affected by emergencies.
4. Reinforce community and government efforts to protect children’s rights.

This way, the main aims of UNICEF have been mentioned, but it is also vital to know
the powers and limitations of this organism. On one hand, its principal power is to
promote international programs as an ECOSOC to reduce inequalities and injustice
for children and their families by organizing international cooperation in specific
topics of child vulnerability. UNICEF is also mandated to strengthen the monitoring
and implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: advising legal
implementation of policies, supporting the Committee on the Rights of the Child, etc
(UNICEF, n. d.). In this sense, UNICEF as an ECOSOC organ controls over 70% of the
human and capital resources of the UN (UNICEF, 2020). On the other hand, this
power is not unlimited because UNICEF is not capable of promoting mandatory
programs. UNICEF, according to the International Law, should respect the Principle
of Sovereignty and Self- Determination of each Member State. It means that its
programs and requirements do not have an obligatory status (Besson, 2011).

Paula Torres
Moderator
 INTRODUCTION TO THE TOPIC

The situation
Nearly two million children are being robbed of an education due to violence and
insecurity in and around their schools in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African
Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria
(UNICEF, 2019).

What's happening?
Many areas in West and Central Africa are witnessing increased hostility towards
education by warring factions. More than one quarter of the 742 verified attacks on
schools globally in 2018 took place in five countries across West and Central Africa.
Additionally, the number of schools forced to close due to rising insecurity in conflict-
affected areas of West and Central Africa tripled between the end of 2017 and June
2019. As of June 2019, 9,272 schools closed across eight countries in the region,
affecting more than 1.91 million children and nearly 44,000 teachers (UNICEF, 2019).

Why is education under threat?

Particularly in the countries of the Central Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger) and
the Lake Chad Basin (Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria), ideological opposition to
what is seen as Western-style education, especially for girls, is central to many of
these disputes. As a result, school children, teachers, administrators and the
education infrastructure are being deliberately targeted. At the same time, worsening
insecurity and conflict, including the use of schools by armed forces and groups,
further disrupts a child’s access to and quality of education.

How is UNICEF helping?

• While a classroom is preferable, it is not the only place to provide learning
activities. For example, UNICEF and the Children’s Radio Foundation have
been collaborating since 2016 on designing and piloting the first-of-its-
kind Radio Education in Emergencies program (UNICEF UK, 2021).
• UNICEF has also been creating temporary learning centers, which provide
a small, safe area for teaching children basic mathematics and reading.
Children are encouraged to write about family and community history in
their notebooks. Most of all, they are encouraged to play a vital activity.
• UNICEF supports efforts by education authorities across the region to
upgrade teachers’ skills. For example, by equipping pre- and in-service
teachers to work with community members on emergency preparedness
and response plans and to provide students with psychosocial support.
 Such support helps children heal, recover, and build resilience (UNICEF,
2019).
• In northeast Nigeria, UNICEF works to help conflict-affected children get
back into learning with the assistance they need to realize their right to an
education. Support includes temporary learning centers; teaching and
learning materials; teacher training in positive classroom management and
emergency preparedness; school rehabilitation; and community
engagement in school-based decision-making (UNICEF, 2018a).

Call to action

UNICEF and partners call on governments, armed forces, other parties to the conflict
and the international community to take concerted action to stop attacks and threats
against schools, students, teachers and other school personnel in West and Central
Africa, and to support quality learning for every child in the region. To reach these
goals (UNICEF, 2019):

o States must protect education and endorse the Safe Schools Declaration,
which calls for stopping attacks on schools, education facilities and personnel.
o Teaching and learning must be designed to build peace and support girls’
education – including tackling gender-based stereotypes, preventing child
marriage, combatting gender-based violence and discriminatory practices, and
protecting pregnant girls’ right to education.
o Authorities must build the capacity of education personnel through training in
core knowledge and competencies, proven pedagogical methods and
provision of psychosocial support.
o All refugee, migrant and displaced children must be able to continue learning
through access to quality education.
o Parents and communities must be essential partners in ensuring access to
quality education during and after emergencies. Donor governments must
commit to multi-year, flexible funding to support education in emergencies
and create linkages to long-term education programming.
 PROBLEMATIC
Thirty years after governments around the world adopted the Convention on the
Rights of the Child, the right to an education is being violated in communities hit by
conflict in West and Central Africa (UNICEF, 2019).

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs revealed in a note

published in October of 2021 titled: Education under attack in West and Central
Africa: A note by the Regional Education in Emergencies Working Group that by the
end of the 2021-22 school year, over 12.400 schools were closed in eight countries
of the region, either because they are a direct target of attacks by Non-State Armed
Groups (NSAGs) or because teachers have fled leaving no-one to teach, or because
parents are too frightened to send their children to school or are themselves in a
process of repeated forced displacement to safer areas.

In addition, another concern about this topic is that many conflicts causing this issue
started a long time ago. For example, the conflict between Chad and Sudan officially
began in 2005, when the Chadian government declared a state of war. Nigeria’s
conflict has been active since 2002, but since 2009 it has become even more violent.
Civil War in South Sudan in 2013 and Libya’s in 2011. West and Central Africa faces
some of the world's most complex challenges in a context where acute and
prolonged crises are deepening and needs deteriorating (UNHCR, 2020).

Also, it should be noted that the confluence of conflict and violence is not the only
crisis in the continent. A study made by the UN Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs affirms that deep poverty, demographic pressures, weak
governance, chronically high food insecurity, and malnutrition, and the impact of
climate change is driving millions to the fringes of survival too (UNICEF, 2022).

STUDY CASES
In conflict zones, millions of children live surrounded by fragility and violence, which
causes them to take away their educational background. There are approximately
456 million children living in conflict zones, of whom 160 million are in high-intensity
conflicts, with 30 per cent fewer opportunities to complete primary education and 50
per cent less likely to complete secondary education.

On the African continent, children have lost access to education due to the COVID-
19 pandemic and armed conflicts in different nations. According to the Anadolu’s
Agency (2021) kids are sending a very clear and urgent message to save education
and make classrooms a safe space for them. To exemplify a little more the situation
facing this part of the world we can explain about two worrying cases, the first one
about Cameroon (ONG Manos Unidas, 2020; Study Country, n. d.; Foaleng, 2015)
and the second one about conflicts in the Middle East (UN, 2015; AFP/MPM, 2015):
Case A
In Cameroon, due to the conflict, many schools have been forced to close. Children
between the ages of 12 and 16 have been affected by this decision. These conflicts
have caused nearly 800,000 children to stop studying. This problem has been
developing since 2016, as mentioned by the page of Manos Unidas (2020): "It began
in 2016 with a series of peaceful strikes by lawyers and teachers that have turned
into an armed conflict with a remarkable degree of destruction of both human lives
and property.”

Another enormous problem in the education of this country is the inaccessibility to

primary schools. Because of the situation that the country is going through, parents
are not able to pay uniforms or fees for educational material and in some cases cannot
afford malaria prophylaxis.

Education in this country is left in the hands of the Non-Governmental Organizations

(NGOs) which work without adhering to a national policy of reference. The
reformulation of an education policy in this country is very complicated since it has
been a challenge for the Cameroonian government since 2015.

However, the government recognizes the shortcomings of its education system,

which is why they have launched different programs that aspire to pursue the
objectives of the World Education Forum. Likewise, they are aware that for the
education of children to be fruitful it must educate adults too, that is why they are
beginning to focus on adult education and parents.

Case B
Conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa have left 13 million children out of
school. UNICEF said nearly 9,000 schools in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Libya cannot be
used because they have been destroyed, damaged, sheltered, displaced or under the
control of armed groups fighting. In the same situation is Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey
where more than 700,000 Syrian refugee children cannot go to classes because the
education systems in those countries already have their classrooms full of students.
The damage is not only material in schools but also the hopelessness of a generation
of schoolchildren who see their future destroyed.

In Yemen, for example, some schools were transformed into barracks by Shiite Houthi
rebels, depriving students of the full development of a semester of school. Tanks and
aerial defense units are stationed in schools which generates fear in children.

Due to this situation many decide to emigrate to Europe, which exposes them to
another big problem, racism in the African community, as well as human trafficking
in the main sea channels that are used to cross the borders.
 QARMAS

1. How can the international community promote regional and inter-regional

cooperation to avoid disputes?
2. Which existing international mechanisms need to be improved and
enhanced to continue forward with children’s rights and education?
3. As the international community, how can we help to prevent premature
school dropouts in conflict zones?
4. Will it be viable, considering the current situation, to create a new organism
to control the NGOs for education in those countries which do not have a
proper education system?
5. How could possible solutions be incorporated in specific countries in which
the non-state armed groups (NSAGs) took the government?
6. How could education be improved in those areas severely affected by
malnutrition and food crises?

FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS

As last recommendations don’t forget to investigate the policy of your countries

regarding the topic. In case the country you have been assigned with does not have
any direct relations with the problematic, you can always think about any other
similar situation that your nation has been involved in and bring up solutions that will
help the international community.

Remember that any proposal you may present during the conference needs to be
well planned, try to explain how it will be implemented around the globe and how it
can work considering the different realities and resources each of the delegations
have.

Finally, consider this MUN as an opportunity to expand your knowledge, have fun
and make good friends at the end of the event. Work as a team with your allies and
respect your policies. And most important, take decisions looking to the well-being
of the citizens you represent.
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