Displaced urged to leave schools so classes can resume

The Liberian government has asked thousands of displaced civilians sheltering in school compounds in the capital, Monrovia, to leave by mid-September so that classes can resume in November. The Ministry of Education on Wednesday said that people should vacate all the primary schools in the city by 15 September. The normal school-year runs from September to June. There are more than 110 temporary shelters for people displaced from their homes by recent fighting in and around Monrovia, of which 47 are schools. Relief workers estimate that these schools and the Ministry of Education headquarters together host 47,000 people. Some relief agencies, such as the International Rescue Committee, have attempted to locate a few teachers and resume makeshift classes for the children of displaced families, but all formal education has been suspended since rebels launched their first attack on the city in early June. The arrival of the first West African peace-keeping troops on 4 August brought an immediate end to fighting in this city of over one million people, while the Liberian government signed a peace agreement with two rebel movements on 18 August. Officials from UN agencies, international aid agencies and the government’s Liberia Refugee Repatriation and Resettlement Commission (LRRRC), said on Thursday they would register the displaced people living in schools and transport them back next week to camps on the outskirts where they previously. The Education Ministry hopes that all of Liberia’s 2700 primary schools, many of which have been shut down by 14 years of civil war, can open their doors in the first week of November - a month later than originally planned. “It is going to be a massive operation, targeting a million children,” David Moussa Ntambara, Emergency Protection Officer for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Liberia told IRIN on Thursday. “But it is important to start because it is one way of returning life to normal in Liberia. It is also a protection mandate for UNICEF. We shall start with primary schools, then later other schools,” he added. UNICEF is conducting an assessment to determine the extent of damage that Liberian schools have undergone as a result of conflict. The UN agency has brought in extra staff who have just re-established the school system in Afghanistan. UNICEF said it would register teachers and pupils, put up temporary classrooms with tarpaulins where necessary, and ship into Monrovia boxes of notebooks, textbooks, pencils, chalk and other requirements over the next two months. According to the Liberian Ministry of Education, the school system has been so badly affected during the decade and half of conflict that half of all children who should have gone to school did not. As a result, 78 percent of Liberians are illiterate. In the northwestern counties of Lofa, Gbarpolu and Grand Cape Mount, which have experienced continued conflict since 1989, education services have been seriously disrupted for over 10 years. Only Monrovia, which is home to between a third and half of Liberia's three million population, managed to keep its schools open continuously until rebel fighters stormed into its western suburbs three months ago. A recent government report said: “The conflict has caused untold damage to humans and the physical infrastructure of schools, emaciated parents and demoralized teachers and students. The war further depleted the education system of competence and quality,” The Ministry of Education estimates that only 30 percent of the country’s 18,000 teachers have any formal training. It also acknowledges that very few girls get a proper education. Only 27 percent of girls complete five years of primary school and at least half are married by the age of 16. By the age of 18, 23 percent of Liberian women have had their first baby, giving the country one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the world. According to the Ministry of Education many of the children who failed to go to schools have become child soldiers, street children and juvenile delinquents. The situation is worse in rural areas where many schools stopped functioning several years ago.