The government has drafted new legislation to address the problem, but critics say that more oversight is still required; there remain only two full-time inspectors for Quranic schools, of which there are thousands throughout the country. “If we’re going to inspect or even oversee inspections across Senegal, we need more personnel, we need more equipment,” said an official in the inspectorate.

The report was issued a year President Macky Sall pledged to look at the problem following a fire in one of the school that killed eight boys. The legislation proposed would gradually increase regulation and oversight for the schools. “Senegal has long had good laws on the books to address forced child begging, but government will to enforce them has been consistently lacking,” said Wells. “President Sall’s government has many allies in waiting among religious authorities and the broader population. He should swiftly seize the opportunity to put an end to the system of exploitation that threatens to leave thousands of kids with an education only in how to survive on the streets,” Wells added.

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Morocco employs a bifurcated system in its public schools, linguistically and culturally. Arabic is the language of primary and secondary schools, but is replaced by French at the university level. A new report argues that this both disrupts a sense of continuity between secondary and tertiary education, and puts students, especially those from the rural areas of the country, at a distinct disadvantage.

The change can be especially challenging for populations far from the educated urban centers of the country. Rural women especially have less exposure to French—still the language of business in Morocco—and are less prepared to advance to higher levels of education.

Students are forced to spend time adjusting to a new linguistic and educational system that could be quite different from what they were used to. The European model used in universities is prompting some students to look for alternative paradigms like instruction in English. “Morocco has long been handicapped because it has been so oriented toward Europe and France,” said Ahmed Legrouri, dean the science and engineering school at Al Akhawayn University (AIU), Morocco’s only English-language college. “I lost all hope with the French system while I was in high school,” said Fahd El Hassan, an AIU graduate from 2009. “It’s all about memorizing, not about learning.”

The reforms Morocco has made are promising and necessary. However the country does need to reevaluate its system of higher education if it is to allow all its citizens to compete for positions in the academy and in the global workforce.

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Once caught, according to Egypt’s new constitution, children should be held in separate cells from adults—but this is often not the case. “In many cases this is not done,” said Maamoun. “It depends on the place of detention, but we hear many cases of the law not being upheld—minors being held with adults who are accused of crimes, or not being allowed visits from their parents or their lawyers.”

There have also been allegations that some captured children have been tortured. “Many children who get arrested are subject to torture at some point by the police, or by soldiers. The norm is that they are beaten in the police vehicles, or when they first arrive at the detention facility,” said Maamoun. “The situation has been getting worse and worse for children since 2011. It’s not just the state—the whole community is failing children. Until we recognize that children are vulnerable and need to be better protected, we will continue to destroy Egypt’s future,” she added.

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Yemen is currently in the midst of an effort at increasing the openness and reach of its higher education system. After the conference of ministers ended on Friday, Mr. Sharaf announced an agreement with the Saudi Minister of Higher Education, Khaled Al-Angari that would allow Yemeni students over 35 years old to enroll in Saudi universities. He also said that Saudi Arabia would provide financial aid for Yemeni students studying abroad, as well as more than 400 scholarships for Yemeni students.

Yemen’s school system is still in dire need of reform. Its teachers are few and often underqualified, and truancy and school enrollments have yet to recover from the upheavals of 2011. Improving the higher education system by offering its students more opportunities for study abroad and scholarships may provide a more skilled workforce that can help facilitate the transition to a new, improved education system.

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Thein Lwin, speaking for the NLD education bloc, said 150 members of the NNER were initially invited to attend the forum, but then the government abruptly revoked their invitations. “We had already prepared to go, and they cancelled,” said Lwin. “It is difficult to work together with the government because this is not the first time they have changed their minds. It’s difficult to believe them, to trust them.”

The Ministry of Education is currently in a two-year process of reviewing the public school system, identifying major priorities and recommending new policies. Ministry officials in charge of the Comprehensive Education Sector Review maintain that their process is inclusive and that they are collaborating with civil groups, NGOs, and community organizations.

In this latest process of education reform, civil groups like the NNER are calling for autonomous universities, higher teacher pay, and lessons involving ethnic minorities and multilingual education.

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Accusations are that construction relatively small, child-friendly classrooms—two-room adjunct facilities added to existing schools—were consistently over-budgeted. Projects that should have cost between 1.2 and 1.4 million rupees (about $12,000-14,000) were consistently budgeted at twice that amount. School principals argued that the construction companies were sending substandard bricks and other low-quality materials. “More than 5,000 of the 9,000 bricks supplied [to our project] so far were sub-standard,” said Damodar Pathak, head teacher in Rastriya Lower Secondary school in Sanai. The District Education Officer, Tek Bahadur Thapa, said his office had no financial responsibility for budgeting the projects. “We were only granted technical and managerial responsibility,” said Thapa. Kamal Sah, an engineer at the district education office, says that some 6 million rupees have been embezzled through the projects.

SRRP is an initiative backed by the World Bank devoted to “increas[ing] access and improv[ing] quality of school education, particularly basic education.” The projects in question, constructing child-friendly classrooms in as many as 40 schools in the Nawalparasi district, is underwritten by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, which operates a number of education support programs in Nepal.

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The Liberian government has had serious problems in the education sector in the last year. In December 2013, the University of Liberia suspended all classes after students began protesting and pressuring provost Madam Wade Elliot Brownell to resign. Two years ago, teachers in Monrovia went on strike demanding higher pay. Teachers went on strike again in 2013. Without a stable economic climate, the country has been unable to keep workers happy and paid. It is unlikely that this will be the last incident in this continuing trend in Liberia.

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The private schools, which offer education for as little as 100 rupees (about $1.63) a month—low enough to be available even to some of India’s poorest citizens—are being forced to shut down because their facilities do not meet RTE’s standards.

Critics of the schools say that that they are not providing running water or other basic amenities, and that they are not providing a high quality education. Some schools say that they will have to raise costs in order to meet the demands of the law. But parents students are fighting back. “Our parents are the pooorest of the poor, labourers and migrant workers, they won’t be able to afford it,” said Citanjali Krishnan, a teacher in a private school in Panchsheel Enclave in Delhi. Though comprehensive data on the school closings has not been released, officials have said that over 1,900 schools have been closed throughout the country so far.

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The report indicates strongly that attacks on education are a tactic of war worldwide. And in addition to the costs of rebuilding schools and infrastructure, the human cost is incalculable. “Schools, students, and staff are not just caught in the crossfire, but are all too often the targets of the attacks,” said Diya Nijhowne, director of the Global Coalition. Schools are often battlegrounds for sectarian or political violence—24 of the 30 countries profiled saw armed groups, state actors or otherwise, use schools as bases, barracks, weapons caches, detention centers, or torture chambers. In 28 of the 30, universities and their staff were used for military purposes or had their staff attacked.

The Global Coalition ends the report calling for the adoption of a series of guidelines, urging parties not to use educational facilities for military use during conflicts. The guidelines draw on international law and humanitarian good practice in asking states not to use educational facilities for military purposes. While these guidelines will not end attacks on education, attempting to remove schools and students from the line of fire is a first step.

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Recent reports indicate that the Sindh province, Pakistan’s second most populous, lags far behind other areas of the country. A survey in 2012 reported that 32 per cent of the province’s children between ages six and 16 were out of school—more than in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the country’s north that are beset with terrorism. Similarly, FATA students performed better in measures of quality than students in Sindh, outperforming them in arithmetic and English.

Some complain that the government has slackened in its oversight of the Sindh school system since the 1980s, resulting in school shutdowns and an overall decline in quality. “With no government attention paid to school monitoring, schools began to shut down and no new schools were opened in response to increasing population,” said Dur Mohammed Buriro, an education campaigner. According to Sindh’s education minister, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, some 3,000 schools are currently closed in Sindh, along with another 28,000 without power, and 20,000 without water. Bruiro said that the first priority for Pakistani schools should be increasing enrollment. “If there are no students in schools, then who will get the free and compulsory education?”

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