̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Gaza

Palestinian education ‘under attack’, leaving a generation close to losing hope, study warns

fpjl2 — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 07:36:49 +0000

̽��ֱ��ongoing war in Gaza will set children and young people’s education back by up to 5 years and risks creating a lost generation of permanently traumatised Palestinian youth, a new study warns.

̽��ֱ��report, by a team of academics working in partnership with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is the first to comprehensively quantify the war’s toll on learning since it began in October 2023. It also details the devastating impact on children, young people and teachers, supported by new accounts from frontline staff and aid workers.

̽��ֱ��study was a joint undertaking involving researchers at the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Centre for Lebanese Studies, in partnership with UNRWA. It shows that Gaza’s children have already lost 14 months of education since 2019 due to COVID-19, earlier Israeli military operations, and the current war.

On this basis and using information such as global post-COVID-19 education recovery data, the researchers model several potential futures for Gaza’s younger generation, depending on when the war ends and how quickly the education system is restored.

̽��ֱ��most optimistic prediction – assuming an immediate ceasefire and rapid international effort to rebuild the education system – is that students will lose 2 years of learning. If the fighting continues until 2026, the losses could stretch to 5 years. This does not account for the additional effects of trauma, hunger and forced displacement, all of which are deepening Gaza’s education crisis.

Without urgent, large-scale international support for education, the researchers suggest that there is a significant threat not just to students’ learning, but their overall faith in the future and in concepts such as human rights. Despite this, the study shows that education has been deprioritised in international aid efforts, in favour of other areas. “Education, simply put, is not seen as lifesaving,” the report warns.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Palestinian education is under attack in Gaza. Israeli military operations have had a significant effect on learning.”

“As well as planning for how we rebuild Gaza’s shattered education system, there is an urgent need to get educational support for children now. Education is a right for all young people. We have a collective responsibility to protect it.”

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 10,600 children and 400 teachers had been killed in Israeli military operations by August 2024, and more than 15,300 students and 2,400 teachers injured. Hundreds of thousands of young people have been displaced and are living in shelters.

Satellite images analysed by the Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster have verified that over 90 per cent of schools have been damaged, many beyond repair. Since August, UNRWA has provided education in the shelters, reaching about 8,000 children, but the study warns that much more is needed to mitigate lost learning, which was already considerable following COVID-19.

̽��ֱ��researchers calculate that 14 months of lost schooling so far have increased ‘learning poverty’ – the proportion of children unable to read a basic text by age 10 – by at least 20 percentage points. ̽��ֱ��accurate figure may be even higher, as the calculation does not account for the wider impacts of the war on children and teachers.

̽��ֱ��study draws together information from different sources and includes a comprehensive involvement of the Education Cluster and Cluster partners sharing their inputs, challenges and progress to enrich the report. ̽��ֱ��report provides a comprehensive overview of those broader effects. It highlights the devastating psychological consequences for Palestinian children who were already living ‘in constant fear and lack of hope’ after 17 years of blockade, according to a 2022 report by Save ̽��ֱ��Children.

Professor Maha Shuayb, Director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies, said: “Young people’s prospects in Gaza are being extinguished and our findings show that with it they are losing hope. Education is central to stabilising that spiral of decline. If it is simply erased, the consequences will be far-reaching.”

Save ̽��ֱ��Children has estimated that more than 10 children per day have lost limbs since the war began. ̽��ֱ��report warns of rising numbers of less visible disabilities, which will put further strain on an education system ill-equipped to support children with special needs.

̽��ֱ��study suggests that continuous shock and suffering are now shaping children’s outlook and world views. Interviewees reported some children questioning values such as equality, human rights and tolerance when these are taught in the shelters. “This is a full generation of trauma,” one humanitarian aid official said; “it will take a generation to overcome it.”

̽��ֱ��report highlights the immense suffering teachers and counsellors have endured physically and mentally. ̽��ֱ��killings, displacement and daily realities of life during war have taken a tremendous toll on their ability to engage meaningfully in education and will, it says, adversely affect reconstruction efforts.

Professor Yusuf Sayed, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “It is important to recognise teachers and counsellors have, like the rest of the population, suffered immensely. There is evidence of extraordinary commitment from educators striving to maintain learning, but inevitably the deprivation, killings and hardship are affecting their ability to do so.”

Despite a flash appeal from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the analysis shows that just 3.5 per cent of aid for Gaza has been invested in education. Major donors like the US and Germany have neglected education in their aid packages, and blockades continue to hinder the delivery of resources on the ground.

Without more funding and access to learning, structured play and other forms of support, the report warns, the long-term repercussions for Gaza’s next generation will only worsen.

It calls for immediate steps focusing on the resumption of education, which include providing counselling, safe learning spaces, and support for students and educators with disabilities. It also calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to occupation, in line with the International Court of Justice advisory opinion and UN recently-adopted resolution, as only then can Gaza’s education system be rebuilt. This will require a focus on recruiting more teachers and counsellors to cope with the scale of learning loss and trauma suffered by children and young people.

“Education is the only asset the Palestinian people have not been dispossessed of. They have proudly invested in the education of their children in the hope for a better future. Today, more than 625,000 deeply traumatised school-aged children are living in the rubble in Gaza. Bringing them back to learning should be our collective priority. Failing to do that will not only lead to a lost generation but also sow the seeds for more extremism, hatred and violence”, said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner General.

̽��ֱ��study also stresses that Palestinians themselves must lead the education recovery. “A ceasefire is the key for the success of any human development activity in Gaza, including education,” the authors write. “Children have seen that the international community will sit idly by as they are killed. This has left them with questions about values that schools and learning aim to instil around humanitarian principles that teachers will have to navigate.”

̽��ֱ��full report, Palestinian Education Under Attack in Gaza: Restoration, Recovery, Rights and Responsibilities in and through Education, is now available online.

Ongoing war in Gaza will set children and young people’s education back by up to 5 years, report suggests.

UNRWA

Boy sitting in the rubble of a destroyed UNRWA school in Nuseirat, Middle Areas, Gaza 2024

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Women waging peace

tdk25 — Fri, 16 Jan 2015 16:00:00 +0000

Two members of a mass movement that has united thousands of Jewish- and Palestinian-Israeli women in opposition to the recurring conflict in Gaza are to give a one-off talk in Cambridge next week, revealing how recent warfare in the region has united women from both sides of the divide in a series of ground-breaking joint initiatives.

̽��ֱ��discussion, which is free and open to all, will involve Michal Barak, a social entrepreneur and political activist, and Samah Salaime Egbariya, a researcher and activist on gender issues, director of Na’am Arab Women in the Center. It will take place at St John’s College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, on Tuesday, 20 January, at 5pm.

Both speakers have been involved in important women’s initiatives which emerged following the most recent eruption of violence between Israel and Hamas during July and August last year. In just a few weeks, more than 2,000 people were killed as Israel launched a military operation in Gaza that left many more thousands of Palestinians homeless and in desperate need of emergency aid. During the same period, more than 4,000 rockets were fired from Gaza on Israel.

In the shadow of this short and savage conflict, women’s organisations began to unite to demand an end to years of intermittent warfare. Operating under the banner of Women Wage Peace, the movement has quickly attracted support from across Israel, with women of all ages, backgrounds and political beliefs pledging support.

In November, more than 1,000 women travelled on what became known as the “peace train” to the town of Sderot, just a mile from the Gaza Strip, where every year ministers, politicians, social activists and academics meet at a major national conference. Dressed in white, the group gathered on the lawn at Sapir Academic College, where the event was being held, and demanded peace negotiations with the Palestinian leadership to prevent future wars.

Elsewhere, thousands of people have participated in peaceful demonstrations at major transport intersections across Israel, or attended political hustings to press candidates in the forthcoming elections on how they plan to stop the violence. Commentators increasingly portray the group as a mouthpiece not just for women, but for a broad-based pro-peace camp in Israel that feels marginalised from the political process supposedly aimed at bringing the conflict to an end. It has been described as “spreading like wildfire”, and as having the potential to transform the nation’s political landscape in a decisive manner.

Yet despite this progress, the women’s peace movement, including Women Wage Peace itself, still only exists on the periphery of Israel’s political establishment. Beyond the country’s borders, it has received little attention and has barely featured in any reporting of the conflict, even though it represents a significant swathe of public opinion.

̽��ֱ��aim of the discussion at Cambridge is partly to raise awareness of the constructive role that the movement is playing in advancing a non-military solution to the conflict. Drawing on the speakers’ own experiences of the events in the summer, however, it will also attempt to show how the movement is, in many ways, a model for how women can and should play a central role in conflict resolution.

Among other issues, the speakers will investigate how various women’s initiatives successfully created a safe space in which people of different political persuasions were able to discuss their views together, and strive towards common goals, at a time when any engagement between their counterparts in the political mainstream was defined by hostility and tension.

Samah Salaime Egbariya, who was herself instrumental in uniting Palestinian and Jewish women in the heat of the conflict in the summer of 2014, said: “In the midst of the war, Palestinian and Jewish women came together to find a common language which enabled them to do something constructive towards ending the bloodshed. Women involved in the summer peace initiative sought to humanise what was happening and this was key to bringing them together. As a result, women are redefining the very notion of what security means in the Israel-Palestine conflict. This was also an effort to compel Jewish Israeli women to engage with the consequences of the violence on people in Gaza through the eyes of women.”

Michal Barak, a key activist of the movement, said: “There have been important and impactful initiatives in the past. What Women Wage Peace has so far succeeded in doing is bringing those disparate efforts together. We have created a movement in which women from across the social, ethnic and political spectrum are engaging with the urgency of peace across the country.”

̽��ֱ��event has been co-organised by Dr Ornit Shani, an Israeli Visiting Scholar at St John’s College, who was actively involved in the women’s peace movement in Israel during the 2014 war, and Dr Esther-Miriam Wagner, Senior Research Fellow at the Woolf Institute, an interfaith organisation which studies the relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims.

“In part, we simply want to tell the story of something that is happening in Israel and is largely unknown,” Dr Shani said. “What we hear about in the news tends to be representative of the political right on both sides of the conflict. ̽��ֱ��simple truth is that not enough women are involved in decision-making concerning any peace settlement. At the same time, there are findings from many recent peace settlements that suggests women can have a hugely positive effect when they are involved.”

̽��ֱ��event, Active Women in the Shadow of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Reflections from the Summer of 2014, will be held in the Main Lecture of the Divinity School, St John’s College, Cambridge, at 5pm on Tuesday, 20 January. All are welcome to attend.

Thousands of Jewish- and Palestinian-Israeli women have joined a movement that is spreading across Israel in opposition to repeated cycles of violence in Gaza. Yet Women Wage Peace remains overlooked by the political establishment, and largely unknown outside Israel. An event at Cambridge will ask why, and examine its significance as a model for women’s action in times of war.

̽��ֱ��simple truth is that not enough women are involved in decision-making concerning any peace settlement

Ornit Shani

Women Wage Peace

Members of the Women Wage Peace movement arriving at the Sderot Conference for Society in the Israeli town of Sderot, November 2014.

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