August 31 – At least 18,000 schools have been damaged or destroyed by South
Asia’s worst flooding in years, which is putting children’s education and
long-term well-being at risk, warns Save the Children.
Thousands more schools have been used as evacuation
centres and about 1.8 million children cannot go to class as flooding continues
to ravage large swathes of Bangladesh, Nepal and India’s northeast. The
regional death toll now stands at over 1,200 with more than 40 million people
affected.
Save the Children is warning that hundreds of
thousands of children could fall permanently out of the school system if
education isn’t prioritised in relief efforts.
“We haven’t seen flooding on this scale in years and
it’s putting the long-term education of an enormous number of children at great
risk. From our experience, the importance of education is often under-valued in
humanitarian crises and we simply cannot let this happen again. We cannot go
backwards,” Save the Children’s General Manager in India’s Bihar state, Rafay
Hussain said.
“We know that the longer children are out of school
following a disaster like this the less likely it is that they’ll ever return.
That’s why it’s so important that education is properly funded in this
response, to get children back to the classroom as soon as it’s safe to do so
and to safeguard their futures.”
The floods have had a huge impact on education
institutions right across the region with more than 12,000 schools damaged or
destroyed in India, 2,000 in Nepal and 4,000 in Bangladesh. In some areas
school has been suspended for several weeks, while in others schools remain
open, however there is a lack of teaching staff and learning materials and
attendance is low because students are trying to survive the floods with their
families.
In Bangladesh, the government has suspended university
examinations and is planning to reschedule primary school examinations.
Save the Children’s Country Director in Bangladesh,
Mark Pierce, said education should be considered a basic necessity in this kind
of emergency response.
“While lifesaving aid like shelter,
food and clean drinking water is being distributed to affected communities, we
must think about education in the same light and how we can get children back
to the classroom as quickly and safely as possible,” Mr Pierce said.
“School is the absolute best place for children to be, acting as a
protection mechanism against things like child labour, early marriage and child
trafficking, which can occur in times of emergencies like floods, when poor
communities are pushed to the brink. School also supports children’s emotional
recovery, providing a sense of normality and routine and a place to be with
their peers.”
Save the
Children is helping the education system recover in all three flood affected
countries. The aid agency has set up temporary learning spaces so classes can
resume immediately, distributed back to school kits with basic learning
materials and is providing psychosocial support to students affected by the
floods. Aside from education, Save the Children is also distributing tarpaulins
for temporary shelter, running special playgroups for children to help them
recover and distributing relief items including hygiene kits, kitchen kits and
cash for basic necessities like food and clean drinking water.
Media contacts:
- Bangladesh: Md
Quayyum Abdul, +880
171 502 5551
- Nepal: Sudarshan
Shrestha, +977 985 100 4575
- India: Devendra Tak,
+91 981 116 8488 or d.tak@savethechildren.in
- Regional level: Evan
Schuurman, +66 989 725 908 or evan.schuurman@savethechildren.org
NOTES:
- Save the Children has a long
history responding to humanitarian crises in the region, including the flooding
in Uttarakhand in 2013, Kashmir in 2014 and south India in 2015 as well as
following cyclones Phailin in 2013 and Hudhud in 2014, and the Nepal earthquake
in 2015.
- An estimated 12,000 schools have been damaged or destroyed in India,
4,000 in Bangladesh and 2,000 in Nepal. Similarly, more than one million
children are missing school in India because of the floods, 300,000 in
Bangladesh and 500,000 in Nepal.
