Displaying items by tag: Education

The Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) is a global, open network working to ensure people’s right to a quality education and a safe learning environment in emergencies and recovery situations. The INEE Minimum Standards, released in 2004, constitute the first global tool to define a minimum level of quality for humanitarian assistance in the education sector and complement the Sphere Project’s Minimum Standards in Disaster Response. In 2009, INEE began updating the Minimum Standards to reflect developments in the field of education in emergencies, incorporate feedback received over the previous five years of implementation and mainstream 11 cross-cutting…

Le tremblement de terre massif qui frappa Haïti le 12 janvier 2010 eut un effet dévastateur sur le secteur de l’éducation.  Quatre vingt pour cent des écoles – près de 4.000 – furent endommagées et on estime à 1,26 million le nombre d’enfants et de jeunes gens affectés ; un grand nombre de professeurs et autres personnels enseignants furent tués ou blessés.[1] Par rapport à d’autres secteurs de sauvetage vitaux tels que l’alimentation, les abris et la santé, l’éducation a généralement bien du mal à se rendre visible et à obtenir des financements dans le contexte d’une opération de réponse d’urgence. …

Wendy Fenton introduced the panel, including the Haitian speaker connecting remotely from Port-au-Prince. Suraiya Begum, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Education of Bangladesh, overseeing education policy and programming for primary public education, presented on the Bangladeshi response to education in emergencies.   Bangladesh’s challenges lie in its over-population, the poverty faced by its population and climate change. In this regard, Bangladesh is frequently exposed to environmental disasters. Suraiya presented a disaster calendar where there is no one month where the country is free from disasters. The map showed that 46 out of the 64 districts are prone to all…

The massive earthquake that hit Haiti on 12 January 2010 had a devastating impact on the education sector. Eighty percent of schools – almost 4,000 – were damaged, and an estimated 1.26 million children and youth were affected; large numbers of teachers and other education personnel were killed and injured.[1] In relation to more obvious lifesaving sectors such as food, shelter and health, education typically struggles to achieve visibility and funding within an emergency response operation. In the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, however, education was accorded a surprisingly high priority. Given the scale of the disaster and the…

In the two decades prior to President Alvaro Uribe’s election in 2001, illicit crop production in Colombia grew from 3,500 to 144,000 hectares, representing an annual increase of 25.6%, with Colombia producing more than 70% of the world’s cocaine. This trend was coupled with a worsening of the armed conflict, which according to Uribe was due to guerrillas’ involvement in the drug trade. Drug-trafficking was deemed to constitute one of the main sources of funding for Colombia’s guerrilla groups; according to government figures, between 1991 and 1996 $470 million was raised from the illegal sale of narcotics, representing 41% of…

The signature of the Sphere-INEE* companionship agreement in October 2008 is a key achievement for humanitarian action as it formally recognises the importance of education as a humanitarian response and the quality of the INEE Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies, Chronic Crises and Early reconstruction as the reference tool for the provision of these services – along with food, shelter, health, and water and sanitation – in emergency and post-crisis recovery contexts. Today, the question is no longer ‘is education life-saving?’ but ‘how can the Sphere-INEE companionship better ensure that humanitarian responses meet the needs and rights of populations…

Last year, I found myself watching an early round of the African football cup finals on the television at the Acholi Inn in Gulu, Northern Uganda. Next to me was a former senior leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army who had said he might give me an interview about civilian protection after the match. The game was extremely “physical” and the LRA man was getting quite heated about the conduct on the pitch. Eventually, one deeply cynical tackle was too much for him. He leapt from his chair, shouting at the referee: “Hey, that’s unfair, that’s terrible, send him off!”…

Disparate NGOs or Co-opted by UN - Where is the debate? In a recent paper on the Future of Humanitarian Action Peter Walker from the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University claims that “the present ‘international humanitarian community’ is an unplanned agglomeration of disparate parts evolving out of the post-WWII consensus”. He says it is time to move on, time for a greater diversity of humanitarian actors to act with more coherence and “for individual agencies to trump agency growth with contribution to the common good”. Meanwhile, at the 4th Autumn School of Humanitarian Aid of URD in Provence in…

Health education and promotion is a process of learning and communication designed to improve health information, health literacy, health knowledge and life skills conducive to individual and community health. GOAL’s community health education and promotion programme in North Darfur applies this definition in a community-oriented education and outreach programme. The programme aims to improve beneficiaries’ health knowledge and practice, and to build capacity among local staff and beneficiaries. An integrated approach: fine words, better practice? GOAL runs an inclusive primary healthcare (PHC) programme encompassing curative care, clinics, water and sanitation and nutrition services for over 200,000 people in North Darfur.…

Conflicts and natural disasters take a heavy toll on education systems and deny generations the knowledge and opportunities that an education can provide. Of the 115 million primary-aged children not in school, one in three live in conflict-affected and fragile states. Millions more have no access to schooling because they live in areas affected by natural disasters. Although education is a basic human right, education in emergencies is only just beginning to be considered as a vital relief intervention. Education is often considered as a long-term development issue, and so struggles to be recognised as a critical area of emergency…