Continuing military operations in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal district are disrupting the education of more than 85,000 students in state-run schools.
According to the latest report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as of the 1 September, 1,016,559 people are registered as displaced from North Waziristan, around 45 percent of them children.
“What would be their future without education and who should we ask for help?” father-of-three Ashraf Wazir, a displaced resident of Miramshah town in North Waziristan, told IRIN, saying that his children had been withdrawn from school in the middle of the previous academic year.
The number of enrolled students in government schools in North Waziristan was 86,323, an official at the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) Secretariat in Peshawar, requesting anonymity, told IRIN, adding that 50,429 of them were primary school children. Data on those in private schools in North Waziristan could not be obtained.
The Pakistan military says it has now cleared militant groups from most parts of North Waziristan, but tribal elders say the government has not yet taken steps to allow people to return, something that has caused protests by displaced students from schools and colleges in North Waziristan.
“We, the students, are [the] worst victims among the displaced people,” said Ejazul Haq, a college student, who led the protest in Bannu on 28 August. Haq said the college students have had difficulty preparing for their annual examinations which are due next month.
The military launched Operation Zarb-e-Azab on 15 June against Taliban militant groups in North Waziristan.
During a visit to a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Bakakhel area of Bannu Frontier Region on 6 September Pakistani Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif said North Waziristan IDPs would be allowed to return their homes soon, according to Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistani military.
Pakistan is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and has also committed to the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals, under which it aspires to place every girl and boy in school by 2015.
However, education activists say, the literacy rate in FATA is lower than all other parts of the country mainly because of Taliban militancy and resulting displacement. The rate in North Waziristan is 15.7 percent, including 26.9 percent among men and 1.5 per cent among women, according to statistics shared by the official at the FATA Secretariat.
Enrolling the displaced
The provincial authorities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KP), where many of the displaced have fled, have decided to admit all school- and college-going displaced youths in local schools and colleges, according to Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani, provincial minister for higher education.
The provincial education department published advertisements in local Urdu newspapers on 1 September encouraging displaced families from North Waziristan to enrol. It said formal documents or school certificates would not be mandatory for admission. “Every student will also receive 2,000 Pakistan rupees (US$200) monthly,” Ghani told IRIN. KP is already running a campaign to pay a stipend of 200 Pakistani rupees ($20) per month to increase the school enrolment rate.
Schools in KP reopened on 1 September at the end of the three-month summer vacation. The authorities have been arranging alternative accommodation for IDPs who were given shelter in state-run schools in KP districts adjacent to North Waziristan. An estimated 460 school buildings in the province were occupied by North Waziristan IDPs, media reports suggest.
However, a number of displaced families have refused to vacate the schools. “We would never reside in the camps because of our social and cultural norms,” said Haji Akbar, 45, a resident of Mir Ali, who is living in a government school in Bannu with his extended 25-member family, 18 of them women and children.
They occupy four of the school’s 20 rooms. “It is considered against Pashtun norms and values to live with women in a tent,” Akbar told IRIN.
Humanitarian response
A number of UN agencies and local NGOs are also setting up informal schools for the displaced children of North Waziristan.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with the provincial education department will support the education of 9,000 IDP children (including 4,500 girls) in IDP hosting districts of the province, said a UNICEF spokesperson; 1,334 displaced children, including 513 girls, have been identified and enrolled in 16 nearby government schools, and government teachers from North Waziristan have been deployed to serve in these schools. North Waziristan’s political authorities have also directed all displaced government teachers to start teaching at schools in different KP districts, especially in Bannu.
BEFARE, a UNICEF NGO partner, is conducting needs assessments among IDPs and encouraging parents to send their children to schools. Educational supplies, including 27 tents and student learning kits have reached Bannu for supporting Temporary Learning Centres (TLCs).
Local organizations have also been active. The Initiative for Social Transformation (IST), an NGO, has set up several TLCs for IDP children in rural areas of Bannu and other districts for KP, said IST’s Nizam Dawar, adding that the organization has been working closely with a 67-member committee consisting of tribal elders from different North Waziristan clans.
However, IDPs are not enrolling their children in schools in Bannu and other districts of KP as they are still optimistic about early repatriation. “We have been living temporarily here and after [a] few weeks or months, we have to go back to our hometown. So why should we enrol our children in local schools,” asked Zar Wali, a resident of Mir Ali and father of six.
Pakistan students in Afghanistan
Not all families displaced by recent fighting remained in the country, with thousands crossing over into neighbouring Afghanistan. “The families especially who were living close to the border had opted to leave for bordering provinces of Afghanistan, especially Khost Province, because of difficulties in transportation and prolonged curfew in North Waziristan,” said Malik Ghulam Khan Madakhel, a North Waziristan tribal elder. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 75,000 people fleeing from conflict in North Waziristan have migrated to Afghanistan’s Khost and Paktika provinces.
However, a number of displaced families who initially fled to Afghanistan have since crossed back into Pakistan via the Kurram Agency, a tribal district adjacent to North Waziristan and Khost Province. Registration of North Waziristan IDPs has been closed in Bannu and Peshawar districts; however, the registration exercise is ongoing at the Ali Zai checkpoint in Kurram Agency for those families returning from Afghanistan, according to OCHA’s latest report.
In an official meeting led by Khost governor Abdul Jabbar Naeemi and also attended by UNHCR and NGOs on 3 September, it was decided that North Waziristan IDP children would be admitted to local schools to save their academic year.
Mubarez Zardan, an official in Khost’s provincial education department, said the Khost governor had asked for 80 informal schools to be opened for refugee families in Khost’s Gullan area, where the Afghan authorities have set up camps for Pakistanis.
“Pakistani teachers from North Waziristan, who also migrated to different parts of Khost Province, will teach displaced children and Afghan authorities would pay them,” Mubarez told IRIN in a telephone interview.
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According to the latest report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as of the 1 September, 1,016,559 people are registered as displaced from North Waziristan, around 45 percent of them children.
“What would be their future without education and who should we ask for help?” father-of-three Ashraf Wazir, a displaced resident of Miramshah town in North Waziristan, told IRIN, saying that his children had been withdrawn from school in the middle of the previous academic year.
The number of enrolled students in government schools in North Waziristan was 86,323, an official at the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) Secretariat in Peshawar, requesting anonymity, told IRIN, adding that 50,429 of them were primary school children. Data on those in private schools in North Waziristan could not be obtained.
The Pakistan military says it has now cleared militant groups from most parts of North Waziristan, but tribal elders say the government has not yet taken steps to allow people to return, something that has caused protests by displaced students from schools and colleges in North Waziristan.
“We, the students, are [the] worst victims among the displaced people,” said Ejazul Haq, a college student, who led the protest in Bannu on 28 August. Haq said the college students have had difficulty preparing for their annual examinations which are due next month.
The military launched Operation Zarb-e-Azab on 15 June against Taliban militant groups in North Waziristan.
During a visit to a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Bakakhel area of Bannu Frontier Region on 6 September Pakistani Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif said North Waziristan IDPs would be allowed to return their homes soon, according to Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the media wing of the Pakistani military.
Pakistan is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and has also committed to the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals, under which it aspires to place every girl and boy in school by 2015.
However, education activists say, the literacy rate in FATA is lower than all other parts of the country mainly because of Taliban militancy and resulting displacement. The rate in North Waziristan is 15.7 percent, including 26.9 percent among men and 1.5 per cent among women, according to statistics shared by the official at the FATA Secretariat.
Enrolling the displaced
The provincial authorities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KP), where many of the displaced have fled, have decided to admit all school- and college-going displaced youths in local schools and colleges, according to Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani, provincial minister for higher education.
The provincial education department published advertisements in local Urdu newspapers on 1 September encouraging displaced families from North Waziristan to enrol. It said formal documents or school certificates would not be mandatory for admission. “Every student will also receive 2,000 Pakistan rupees (US$200) monthly,” Ghani told IRIN. KP is already running a campaign to pay a stipend of 200 Pakistani rupees ($20) per month to increase the school enrolment rate.
Schools in KP reopened on 1 September at the end of the three-month summer vacation. The authorities have been arranging alternative accommodation for IDPs who were given shelter in state-run schools in KP districts adjacent to North Waziristan. An estimated 460 school buildings in the province were occupied by North Waziristan IDPs, media reports suggest.
However, a number of displaced families have refused to vacate the schools. “We would never reside in the camps because of our social and cultural norms,” said Haji Akbar, 45, a resident of Mir Ali, who is living in a government school in Bannu with his extended 25-member family, 18 of them women and children.
They occupy four of the school’s 20 rooms. “It is considered against Pashtun norms and values to live with women in a tent,” Akbar told IRIN.
Humanitarian response
A number of UN agencies and local NGOs are also setting up informal schools for the displaced children of North Waziristan.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with the provincial education department will support the education of 9,000 IDP children (including 4,500 girls) in IDP hosting districts of the province, said a UNICEF spokesperson; 1,334 displaced children, including 513 girls, have been identified and enrolled in 16 nearby government schools, and government teachers from North Waziristan have been deployed to serve in these schools. North Waziristan’s political authorities have also directed all displaced government teachers to start teaching at schools in different KP districts, especially in Bannu.
BEFARE, a UNICEF NGO partner, is conducting needs assessments among IDPs and encouraging parents to send their children to schools. Educational supplies, including 27 tents and student learning kits have reached Bannu for supporting Temporary Learning Centres (TLCs).
Local organizations have also been active. The Initiative for Social Transformation (IST), an NGO, has set up several TLCs for IDP children in rural areas of Bannu and other districts for KP, said IST’s Nizam Dawar, adding that the organization has been working closely with a 67-member committee consisting of tribal elders from different North Waziristan clans.
However, IDPs are not enrolling their children in schools in Bannu and other districts of KP as they are still optimistic about early repatriation. “We have been living temporarily here and after [a] few weeks or months, we have to go back to our hometown. So why should we enrol our children in local schools,” asked Zar Wali, a resident of Mir Ali and father of six.
Pakistan students in Afghanistan
Not all families displaced by recent fighting remained in the country, with thousands crossing over into neighbouring Afghanistan. “The families especially who were living close to the border had opted to leave for bordering provinces of Afghanistan, especially Khost Province, because of difficulties in transportation and prolonged curfew in North Waziristan,” said Malik Ghulam Khan Madakhel, a North Waziristan tribal elder. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 75,000 people fleeing from conflict in North Waziristan have migrated to Afghanistan’s Khost and Paktika provinces.
However, a number of displaced families who initially fled to Afghanistan have since crossed back into Pakistan via the Kurram Agency, a tribal district adjacent to North Waziristan and Khost Province. Registration of North Waziristan IDPs has been closed in Bannu and Peshawar districts; however, the registration exercise is ongoing at the Ali Zai checkpoint in Kurram Agency for those families returning from Afghanistan, according to OCHA’s latest report.
In an official meeting led by Khost governor Abdul Jabbar Naeemi and also attended by UNHCR and NGOs on 3 September, it was decided that North Waziristan IDP children would be admitted to local schools to save their academic year.
Mubarez Zardan, an official in Khost’s provincial education department, said the Khost governor had asked for 80 informal schools to be opened for refugee families in Khost’s Gullan area, where the Afghan authorities have set up camps for Pakistanis.
“Pakistani teachers from North Waziristan, who also migrated to different parts of Khost Province, will teach displaced children and Afghan authorities would pay them,” Mubarez told IRIN in a telephone interview.
zr/jj/cb
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
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