Children cannot wait for education while we debate the difficulties
and the details. Peace begins in the minds of children, and it must
begin today.
In a first-ever joint statement , more than thirty winners of the
Nobel Peace
Prize called for urgent action to implement quality
education and build peace in conflict-affected countries.
The Nobel Laureates, including President Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Aung San Suu Kyi,
urged world leaders to pay more attention to the educational needs of
more than 37 million children who live in fragile states and are unable
to go to
school.
In a joint letter to world leaders, initiated by Save the Children, thirty-one Nobel Peace Prize winners say:
"War and conflict are perpetrated by adults. But
every adult was once a
child and grew up with experiences and guidance that shaped their
lives. At the heart of this lies education. But if more than 70 million
children do not even have the chance to
go to school, and more than
half of these children live in countries affected by armed conflict -
what are these children learning?"
The letter comes at a time when millions of
children continue to be
denied an education because of war. In the Democratic Republic of
Congo, even before the recent fighting, 5 million of the 9.6 million
children of school age are unable to go
to school. Without adequate
protection from the escalating conflict in recent weeks, even more
children have been forced to flee their schools.
Some schools have even been targeted to
recruit schoolchildren as child
soldiers. An analysis of civil wars of the past fifty years showed that
each year of formal schooling attended by boys reduces the risk of
their becoming involved in
conflict by 20 percent - yet children in
trapped in this spiral of conflict, continue to be denied education.
RNPS IMAGES OF THE YEAR 2008 Rescuers work at the crash site of the Hewa Bora Airways passenger jet in Goma, capital of Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern North Kivu province, ...
