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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Pakistan’s literacy rate, standing at 55 per cent, is among the lowest in the world, ranking 113 among 120 nations surveyed by UNESCO. Timo Pakkala, UN Resident Coordinator in Pakistan said, “Education is one of the key priority areas of the government of Pakistan.” Pakistani enrollment rates are also among the highest in the world—only 66 per cent of children attend primary school, and 7.2 million children are not enrolled in primary school.

Despite an educational system that has underperformed and is corrupt and in disarray, there have been improvements in increasing the literacy rate especially in rural areas of the country. The Pakistan Literacy Project aims at a holistic approach to literacy gains, targeting schools, universities, and expanding English skills for more than 5,000 low-income students. “We are hopeful that [the] Pakistan Reading Project… will assist our government’s efforts to improve the prevailing situation by reaching out to 4 million primary school children and providing them with the opportunity to enhance their reading skills,” said Minister for State Education, Training and Standards in Higher Education ENG Muhammad Bligh-Ur-Rehman. 

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Lashari says that sex education was the villagers’ idea. Parents are informed of the curriculum before enrollment, and none has objected yet, according to Lashari. The lessons also cover issues of marriage, including marital rape. “Our teacher has told us everything that we’ll have to do when we get married. Now we’ve learned what we should do and what we should not,” said Sajida Baloch, 16. In Pakistan, where marital rape is not a recognized crime, teaching the girls about the problem is a novel idea. “We tell them their husband can’t have sex with them if they are not willing,” Lashari said.

Sex education remains a largely taboo topic in Pakistan—Arshad Javed, a doctor in Lahore who has written three books on sex education says he sells 7,000 copies every year, but that none are bought by schools. “It is against our constitution and religion,” said Mirza Kashif Ali, president of the All Pakistan Private Schools Federation, representing 152,000 schools nationwide. “What’s the point of knowing about a thing you’re not supposed to do? It should not be allowed at school level,” he claimed. However, according Tahir Ashrafi, head of the Pakistan Ulema council alliance of moderate clerics, “If the teachers are female, they can give such information to girls within the limits of sharia law.”

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There are more than 3.8 girls in Pakistan who are out of school, and those in school are more likely to drop out than boys. The program’s goal is to reduce the gender gap between girls and boys—which currently stands at 10 per cent—down to five per cent within three years. A 2002 study, the Pakistan Integrated Household Survey, found that a huge disparity in access to education between boys and girls: 34 percent of sampled rural areas reported no access to a girls’ primary school, compared to 15 per cent for boys.

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The Government High School Ibrahimzai was the only one in the Shia-dominated area. In fact, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni group, took responsibility for the attack, indicating that it was motivated by sectarian differences between the dominant Sunni sect of Islam and the minority Shia group. Suicide bombings are on the rise all over the world, and have increased from an annual average of 35 in the 1980s to an average of 98 in 2003. The frequency of these attacks have increased particularly in Pakistan due to years of violence and war in neighboring Afghanistan, which have pushed a generation of immigrants toward extremism.

Sectarian violence, extremism, and political instability create monumental challenges for children in Pakistan, and the case of Hasan and his classmates is only one example. Hasan’s bravery and his community’s recognition shows that the majority of people in Pakistan today are fighting a battle for basic rights, such as education. The principal of the school stated, “the attack targeted education and I am surprised neither the federal nor the provincial government functionary has visited the family. Their silence is condemnable.” The International Human Rights Commission (IHRC) declared a global bravery award for Hasan. It was also later reported that Hasan would be given the “Sitara-e-Shujaat,” which is Pakistan’s highest award for bravery.

Hasan is seen as a hero and martyr among his classmates and community. His grieving father stated, “My son made his mother cry, but saved hundreds of mothers from crying for their children.”

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Balochistan has 22,000 settlements that are served by only 12,600 government run schools and 57,000 teachers. This scarcity of schools and teachers deprives children of their right to an education.

According to Sardar Raza Muhammad Bareech, adviser to the Chief Minister of Balochistan, “there is no light at the end of the tunnel…We have to recuit 60,000 teachers to overcome the educational crisis” and the government needs to build an additional 10,000 schools. Without support from the federal government, the provincial government does not have the resources to finance the needed educational reforms.

Even existing schools fail to provide adequate education due to a lack of supplies and basic facilities. Many of these schools lack furniture, heat, toilets or running water. This week, following visits to government schools that revealed these dire conditions, Balochistan’s Chief Minister Dr. Abdul Malik Baloch declared an “educational emergency” throughout the province.

Balochistan is Pakistan’s least populated and poorest province with around 46% of the population living below the poverty line.  Under these conditions, the Baloch people have inadequate access not only to education but also to healthcare, infrastructure and food security.

Under these conditions, “people today cannot do their business in peace, they cannot send their children to school…There is no electricity. These are all the crises,” stated Nawabzada Lashkari Raisani, leader of the Raisani tribe.

Since 2005, Balochistan has sought to gain independence through conflict with the Pakistani state. This conflict has led the province into instability. Civilians are often the victims of violence or of forced disappearance by government forces and gangs. Thousands of civilians, activists, students and guerilla fighters have disappeared without a trace since the conflict first began.

Jamil Bugti, the son of Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti, described these acts, stating “they picked up people, tortured them, killed them  and then made sure that their bodies were recovered…Or bodies hanging from trees, and all that.”

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In a statement released by All Pakistan Private Schools Federation, the President Mirza Kashif asserts that “our academics have thoroughly studied her [Malala's] book and have concluded that reading that book will only confuse our children. Malala’s defense of Salman Rushdie in the name of freedom of expression, not writing Peace Be Upon Him after the name of the prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and criticizing the Quranic injunctions about the status of women in testifying as witnesses are only a few things which will challenge the idealogical foundations of our next generation.”

Semi-autobiographical “I am Malala” was co-written with British journalist Christina Lamb and records Malala’s personal experience under Taliban rule, writing anonymous blogs for the BBC, her advocacy for girls’ education, and events transpiring before Malala’s birth. According to Karachi-based novelist and education campaigner Bina Shah, “the decision to ban the book is the result of a deliberate smear campaign run against Malala and right-wing commentators. There has been complete confusion about the book, sown very deliberately in the minds of adults because of this right right-wing talk.”

In contrast, Kashif asserts “we can see from her writing that she has not authored the book herself. Even if she has, it creates a lot of doubt amongst our kids regarding religion which we, being Muslims, can never allow.” The Taliban have also threatened to attack any bookstore selling Malala’s book. 

The decision to ban her memoir has inspired conflictual opinions from Pakistan’s youth. 15 year old student Zonash Raza has mixed opinions, explaining “the world already gets to hear a lot of corruption stories about Pakistan and this only going to add to that same image.”

16 year old Yumma Afzal supports Malala’s efforts, saying “the decision [to ban the book] is completely wrong and it is a conspiracy to show Malala as a US puppet. I have heard talk shows on TV where people are claiming Malala is fake and the injuries she received are not real, but I really don’t agree with them. She is a hero and an inspiration.” 

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“The government has failed to provide any answer or details about the state of ghost and non-functional schools, while apparently funds and salaries were being disbursed as buildings remain abandoned or occupied by animals…There are animals kept in schools and the buildings have been turned into stables. This is what we are doing to our children when education is a constitutional right,” Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said.

This recent state-wide investigation came in response to a petition from Rehmat Ullah of the Sindh Rural Development Society. The charity’s leader asked the Supreme Court to investigate “ghost schools” which plague largely affect rural areas like Sindh province, keeping large numbers of children out of school. Estimates predict that hundreds of thousands of government schools country-wide remain unused while approximately 25,000 “ghost teachers” continue to receive pay.

Iqual Gabol, a father of three children without access to education on the outskirts of Karachi, spoke out stating “not a single teacher has been appointed here since the school was built in 2005. There’s no electricity. The building is of no use. We’ve requested many times to the chief minister, the education minister, even the president to make it functional, but nothing has happened”

“Ghost schools” are symptomatic of the larger problem of Pakistan’s ongoing educational crisis. As a result of inadequate funding and widespread corruption, nearly one-half of the country’s primary school aged children and three-quarters of all girls remain out of school.

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Despite multiple federal and international grants and programs, 1.97 billion dollars between 1997 and 2012, the literacy rate in Pakistan has only slightly improved in that time. Today, over half of the country’s children aged 5-to-16 lack access to basic education. In 1998, only 42.7 percent of Pakistanis has received an education; over twenty years later the rate has only risen to 46 percent.

Khusro Pervez, Director General of the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD), a non-profit group that focuses on education, says, “Education has never been a national priority.” Azman Khan and Myra Iqbal from Reuters captures the problem as this: “since independence in 1947, Pakistan has seen seven national education policies, eight five-year-plans and about half a dozen other education schemes. Yet the results are dismal.”

Kaiser Bengali, an education expert from the government after government has abandoned the policies of the previous administration and adopted new and even loftier targets, wreaking havoc on the education system and squandering millions of dollars.”

Additionally, Pakistan’s education system is full of corruption.  In 2011, The Supreme Court heard a case of 66 billion rupees levied in a special education tax between 1985 and 1995 but never used for schools. Additionally, in 2013, Transparency International found that 43 percent of Pakistanis surveyed viewed the education system as corrupt or highly corrupt. While the progress in Pakistan seems slow and dismal, Pakistan’s federal education budget for 2013 is 17 percent higher than last year and the government has honored “its pledge to double the education budget and keep its eyes glued on the target.”

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