Pakistan faces significant education challenges, with an estimated 25 million children out of school. The report includes testimonies on how militant violence has disrupted the education of hundreds of thousands of children, particularly girls. The report also documents instances of military use of educational institutions.
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“I was just 10 when more than 400 schools [in Pakistan] were destroyed,” said Malala Yousafzai when she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. “And our beautiful dreams turned into nightmares. Education went from being a right to being a crime. Girls were stopped from going to school.”(Malala Yousafzai)
On 16 December 2014, six gunmen affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban(TTP) conducted a terrorist attack on the Army Public School in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar. The militants, all of whom were foreign nationals, included one Chechen, three Arabs and two Afghans.[8] They entered the school and opened fire on school staff and children,[6][9]killing 149 people including 132 schoolchildren, ranging between eight and eighteen years of age making it the world’s fourth deadliest school massacre.[10][11] A rescue operation was launched by the Pakistan Army‘s Special Services Group(SSG) special forces, who killed all six terrorists and rescued 960 people
In mid-June, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights will review Pakistan’s human rights record, including the right to education. The committee has previously recommendedthat schools should be adequately protected from attacks and everyone should be able to access education during armed conflict. Based on the evidence submitted, the committee can be expected to focus on attacks on education during the review, and recommend steps Pakistan needs to take to better protect education.
Between2007 to 2015, there were 867 attacks on schools and universities. These attacks killed 392 people, most of them were children. Some students have targeted simply for educating girls.
June 16, 2013: Sardar Bahadur Khan University, Quetta
A female suicide bomber detonates herself on a bus transporting women students of Sardar Bahadur Khan University in Quetta, killing 15, including herself.
October 9, 2012: Swat school bus attack: School girl Malala Yousufzai was shot on a school bus by a Taliban militant in Swat.
June 9, 2012: Quetta University bus attack: At least five students from the ethnic Hazara community were killed and over 70 others, including policemen and children, wounded in a bomb attack on a university bus in Quetta city.
September 9, 2014: A girls’ school in Bajaur agency, reconstructed after already being destroyed in 2010, was blown up again on the eve of International Literacy Day. No injuries.
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