School attendance reportedly dropping, says UNICEF

Many schools in Iraqi cities and towns, which have been plagued by fighting and bomb attacks, have been closed, preventing hundreds of children from receiving basic education. On Wednesday, several coordinated bombs exploded at three police stations and a police academy in the southern city of Basra during the morning rush hour. Two school buses were hit when the bombs were detonated. In total at least 58 people, many of them children, were killed, according to media reports. This incident and others, along with general insecurity around the country, have forced parents to keep children at home and away from what they feel could be danger. "What we do know is that children are not in school and are out playing in the streets and say they were sent home," UNICEF press officer Sarah Cameron told IRIN on Thursday from the Jordanian capital, Amman. Heavy fighting in the city of Fallujah, 50 km west of Baghdad, between Coalition forces and anti-Coalition insurgents which left some 700 Iraqis dead, according to media reports, has also had the same effect. "Parents in Fallujah are not sending children to school out of fear," she explained. Attendance at school has always been high in Iraq as primary education was made compulsory by Saddam Hussein. Under his rule some 82 percent of children were being educated, according to official government statistics. In mid-May 2003, an assessment by Save the Children, a UK-based NGO, of three Baghdad schools found attendance to be less than 50 percent. The survey attributed non-attendance by girls mainly to insecurity and fear of kidnapping. School attendance had increased by the first week of June to approximately 75 percent it was reported. However, there are no statistics on the current situation. "We don't have specific information on what is happening now, but when violence increases parents keep children at home, we know this goes on and anecdotal reports tell us this," Cameron explained. "In the long term when children are not in school they become vulnerable. For example, they are out on the streets and exposed to unexploded ordnance and abuse and trauma associated with it," she stressed, adding that the disruption in education would affect the child's development and employment opportunities. Cameron said that communities in Iraq had already suffered from a lack of education due to previous wars and although significant gains were made in school attendance after the recent war, to oust Saddam, much ground had been lost. UNICEF states that in many cities across Iraq, children are unable to lead a normal life. "They are not just unable to attend school and get decent health care and clean water, but far too often they are paying the ultimate price," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. "The ongoing instability and fighting is hitting children the hardest," she added. The attacks in Basra provoked reaction from many international organisations. "Indiscriminate attacks have devastating affects and reveal a complete disregard for the most fundamental human right - the right to life. This became tragically clear for the parents of the children, who were killed or injured by the explosion on their way to school," Amnesty International said in a statement issued on Wednesday. "Those responsible must be brought to justice in accordance with international law, the climate of impunity must stop, otherwise the cycle of violence will never end". Meanwhile, the 'All Our Children' consortium, made up of various church organisations, also issued a condemnation of the attacks: "Today's [Wednesday's] explosions that engulfed mini-buses of children on their way to school in Basra shows pointedly that those trying to embark on a normal day, trying in the midst of chaos, trying perhaps at the behest of parents who sought to give their children childhood, remain exposed, defenceless, vulnerable and at risk in the face of the violence that continues to engulf their country," a statement said.