Barriers to education still strong for girls in crisis areas
Members of the NGO Plan International give lessons to young girls, in Maroua in northern Cameroon, April 28, 2022. © DANIEL BELOUMOU OLOMO / AFP
Text by: Louise Huet
9 mins
On the occasion of World Education Day, this January 24, several NGOs recall the extent to which inequalities between girls and boys persist in access to learning.
Within regions in emergency situations, the observation is clear: girls are still the first to be excluded from schooling.
Advertising
Read more
Despite notable progress in girls' access to school worldwide, in 2021 still 132 million girls aged 6 to 17 are not in school, 75% of whom are adolescents, according to
the World Bank
.
Of these, one in four are in a developing country.
Indeed, while all the data indicate that, on average, girls are gradually closing the gaps in access to education with boys, the situation is much more contrasted when we look a little more closely at certain regions.
According to
the Plan International association
, it is nevertheless undeniable that education is "
a real lever of emancipation for girls
" and a powerful vector for "
getting a country out of poverty
".
Despite everything, countries in crisis are struggling to reduce the gap in schooling between girls and boys, and to increase the number of literate girls.
"
In some twenty countries, concentrated in Central Africa, West Africa and South-East Asia, girls still suffer from very serious inequalities in terms of education
", comments Manos Antoninis, Director of the
Report
UNESCO
's Global Education Monitor.
Education, a recent humanitarian aid priority
In times of conflict, war, after a natural disaster or during a humanitarian crisis, education always seems to be the big loser.
“
For a long time, it was considered that the most important thing for people was to cover basic needs, housing and food.
It is difficult to recognize that education is also an essential humanitarian service that can save lives
,” laments Carole Coupez, Deputy General Delegate of the Solidarité Laïque collective.
"
But for the past ten years, we have understood that education is a very important factor in promoting the development of countries
", adds Manos Antoninis.
Awareness of the importance of education which has accelerated with the start of the war in Syria, according to Violaine Gagnet, director of programs at Plan international France.
“
The Syrian people were very educated, and overnight they didn't go back to school.
That's why we talked about the
"lost Syrian generation"
.
It was the same thing in
Yemen
and then in Ukraine, and I think that with these crises, we have better understood the scope that education and quality teaching can have.
»
However, the field of education represents barely 1.6% of the humanitarian aid allocated by France in 2021, while it amounted to 6.48% in 2020 and 3.4% in 2019, according to
the Childhood Group
.
Faced with this observation, Solidarité laïque tries to put education back at the heart of concerns by moving away from an overly narrow vision of schooling.
"
We necessarily think of education as something that takes time, that requires infrastructure, classrooms... But there are parallel, less formal solutions that give education back its role of prevention and protection and provide better responses to crises
,” says Pascal Kouamé, director of the group’s international cooperation actions.
According to him, popular or informal education can be crucial alternatives to help displaced populations in times of conflict.
In Mali, in the Sahel region,
a target of terrorism
, their volunteers and mobilized teachers try, for example, to adapt to the nomadic population, by traveling with them to continue to educate the children.
A vicious cycle difficult to break for girls
According to the Education Cannot Wait
monetary fund
, the first victims of this neglected education in emergency situations are girls, since they are “
2.5 times more likely to be out of school than boys
”.
This figure can be explained by several obstacles, all based on two factors: gender stereotypes and poverty.
"
Lack of infrastructure and school transport, distance from school, poor teaching conditions, excessively high tuition fees...
", Solidarité Laïque lists several structural causes that exclude children, and girls, from education.
school.
Also, to meet the financial needs of the most impoverished families, children tend to be put to work.
“
And because of strong gender prejudices, we will rather consider that the boy must go to school and that the girl must work
”, deciphers Violaine Gagnet.
These exacerbated economic pressures then lead to a vicious circle that is difficult to break, and for the girls, a double penalty.
For example, early marriage encourages girls to leave school, very often to
“have one less mouth to feed
”.
In Nigeria, one in five teenage girls do not go to school because they are married or pregnant, according to UNESCO.
Once married, precocious pregnancies and potential sexual assault keep them even further away from school.
And the law is slowly changing.
Policies that limited or prevented young pregnant girls from going to school were only repealed in 2019 in Mozambique, Zimbabwe or Uganda.
The case of Afghanistan stands out as a “
terrible exception
” according to Manos Antoninis, a country where women's rights are
drastically declining
day by day since the Taliban took power.
And among the latest
liberticidal measures
taken, is the prohibition for women to access secondary and
university
education .
Afghan girls, many of whom have not set foot in school for more than a year, protest for their right to education, in Kabul, August 2, 2022. © Ebrahim Noroozi / AP
In addition, girls are more exposed to violence on the way to school.
"
During a war, some parents are afraid to let their daughter go to school because of the possible dangers on the way, and therefore prefer to keep them at home
", continues Manos Antoninis.
Subjected to sexual violence, caught in human trafficking, caught up in prostitution networks… Plan international volunteers regularly describe such situations, particularly at the borders of Ukraine.
“
Our volunteers saw vans and men who seemed to be waiting to see girls come alone
,” describes Violaine Gagnet.
► Also to listen: Education: how to make up for girls?
Make you want to go back to school
To fight against certain sexist mentalities in addition to impoverishment, humanitarian aid in crisis areas must find the right means to highlight the importance of girls' education.
"
We notice that the girls internalize the role of mother or wife assigned by society a lot
," explains Violaine Gagnet.
So, Plan International strives to restore more “
normal
” living conditions to motivate people to go back to school, and protect girls who have been traumatized.
Similarly, Solidarité Laïque has taken the initiative to make schools a place of life and citizenship, open to issues other than those of schooling, such as health and sexuality.
"
In Haiti
, for example, in addition to the hours of lessons that we offer, psychologists take care of young people who have suffered trauma during conflicts to help them see school as an environment of fulfillment
," says Pascal Kouamé. .
According to Manos Antoninis, the benefits of a population with more educated women are found at the level of health, demography, family income, and in the long term, at the level
of "the pacification of relations in a society
”.
Also, "
An additional year of study
is equivalent to 10 to 20% more salary for a woman, which therefore gives her greater economic power and more independence
", underlines Violaine Gagnet.
In a
2018 report
, the World Bank also showed that girls' limited access to education costs countries "
between 15,000 and 30,000 billion dollars in lost productivity and income throughout life.
".
► Read also: Ten years after the first World Day for Girls' Rights, the findings are overwhelming
Humanitarian aid faces many challenges
Nevertheless, humanitarian work comes up against multiple resistances, religious, state, cultural, ideological… “
Very often we hear
'yes but that's how it is done here'
.
Except that international law and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child take precedence over all rights, regardless of the legislation of the country
”, asserts Violaine Gagnet.
Thus, certain laws put in place and supposed to protect girls are sometimes circumvented, among other things on early marriage, without too many reprisals.
The NGOs on the ground also expect local governments to honor the commitments made by signing certain United Nations resolutions.
“
One of the problems we face is that before, education seemed to be a sanctuary domain, which was avoided to be attacked during a conflict.
But today, as is the case in the war in Ukraine, we observe that places of education are now targeted, despite international conventions supposed to protect children ,
”
worries Carole Coupez.
And beyond access to the school environment, many obstacles still persist in terms of the content and quality of teaching.
“
Even if we succeed in improving girls' access to school, what do we teach them?
How are they represented in textbooks?
What educational program is implemented and with what patriarchal symbols?
asks Manos Antoninis.
Academic content is not the only challenge to face.
The demand of impoverished populations for more education is in fact very high, as Solidarité Laïque points out.
"
Today, in the field, many families are well aware of the fact that acquiring knowledge is a hope of obtaining a better future for their children
", assures Pascal Kouamé.
Except that this level of demand for aid is much more sustained than the international offer to respond to it.
Added to this, according to the associations, is the problem of access to populations where instability reigns, and the lack of funding for education.
Major obstacles that prevent NGOs from acting properly for the education of children, and especially that of girls.
► To read also: Girls, the first victims of child labor which is increasing
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
Education
Womens rights
Children's rights
Human rights
our selection
NGO
Social issues