THE grim reality of modern warfare is that far more civilians perish than do actual combatants. Over and above this tragic reality, however, is another disaster which until recently has been little considered. According to figures just available from the highly respected organization, Save the Children, at least 43 million children worldwide will grow up without any formal education as a result of wars and conflict.
There seems little reason to doubt this staggering and appalling statistic. There are already two well-known images of child victims of conflict. The first is young people, considerably smaller than they should be for their age, with distended stomachs and the tragically empty staring eyes of the starving. Though changing weather cycles are responsible for more and more crop failures, the major cause of hunger and malnourishment in the world is armed strife. Such wars inevitably include the plundering of food stores and the destruction of fields and farms and often the sowing of anti-personnel mines in place of corn. The second famous image is of child soldiers. Whether in Africa, Nepal or Sri Lanka, they are hardly able to hold the gun they have been given but are willing nevertheless, either through fear or indoctrination, to turn that weapon on whomever they are told is their enemy and destroy him — if they are not themselves destroyed in the attempt.
There is unfortunately little comprehension internationally of the way in which warfare excludes children from education, especially when they are at the all-important primary school age. Perhaps in the wealthy West, there has been the assumption that most Third World children are usually put to work as quickly as possible in order to earn money for their families. If so, there is far too little understanding of the high value placed on a decent education by parents who perhaps had no such thing themselves.
Five years ago, by signing the so-called Millennium Goals, world leaders committed themselves to universal primary education by 2015. The world’s wars, large and small, are surely making this commitment impossible. Thanks to the bloody disagreements of the older generation, some 43 million children will grow up into uneducated adults. The best that could be done would be to make the re-establishment of properly equipped and staffed schools a priority whenever and wherever peace takes the place of war. But for many, such an exercise will be too late. The chance they had to acquire basic numeracy and literacy skills will have gone. As their societies develop and become more sophisticated, their roles will always be that of the poorly paid, unskilled worker.
But there is worse. As was recognized earlier this year by the Organization of Islamic Conference at its important meeting in Riyadh, the lack of education and the social deprivation that so often accompanies it, produce unenlightened, gullible people who can easily be attracted by the lures of terrorist bigots and become suicide bombers or other cannon fodder. Ignorance is the fanatics’ most powerful ally and must be eliminated or, at the very least, very substantially reduced.
