Daily Times

There are million and one ways to destroy a country and its determination during a war, most easiest of which centres around primary education. With more than 1300 schools totally destroyed in the government-held provinces in Ukraine as a result of an ongoing war, shrill alarm bells surrounding the prospects of education and normalcy in the conflict-ravaged terrain are almost ubiquitous across the Western world.

Latest to register its reservations, the UN Agency for Children emphasised, “Not only has this left Ukraine’s children struggling to progress in their education, but they are also struggling to retain what they learnt when their schools were fully functioning.” No qualms about the scale of damage to at least 3,6 million children imperilled by losing critical years of schooling and social development.

Since education cannot be put on hold, humanitarian organisations like UNICEF have been working with the government and other partners to rehabilitate bomb shelters in kindergartens and schools; providing them with laptops and other supplies on top of tools to ensure psychosocial support. Informal learning opportunities are similarly gaining momentum in a bid to ensure childhood and its related hopes for a better tomorrow are not last. How mighty noble of the developed world to realise the needs of the vulnerable even when the situation was becoming downright chaotic!

Sadly for the rest of us, this magnanimity is not able to push through the obstacles when similar conflicts appear in other parts of the world. A conflict that had begun in mid-April has pushed Sudan’s faltering education system into a state of collapse.

Schools shut down or repurposed into group homes and most end-of-year exams cancelled, Sudan’s war has no end in sight but not many in the international community have yet paid any attention to similar distress signals sent out by the likes of the UN. While measly efforts continue, they speak volumes about an overall apathy to those who do not look like us or speak the same language. *