Education & Civil society

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Following the widespread of aggravating war crimes across  Syria, since 2011 by the Syrian regime, the young Syrian population, who make up over half of the population in Syria, were immensely affected by the eruption of  the violence. Having their home, schools, playing ground shutdown, bombed and left alone battling for their future, the war that has stripped them of their childhood. While Syria’s young generation, over the past ten years, has been in a struggle to overcome the educational gap that overturned, the continuous  distribution of this process boosted up local initiatives to revive the education system.  Being one of the most damaged, One of the most affected sectors, over the course of ten years of state-war against Syrian, is the educational system that has been affected, since the very beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011.

Civil society inception

Following the large-scale protest, the Syrian regime used schools as torturing center and military bases where they ruthlessly tortured, killed hundreds of protesters and launch strikes against opposition areas. Thousands of students had to leave schooling due to the Syrian regime mass violence in large cities in Syria, such as Damascus, Dara’a and Aleppo. Derived by the significance of education, activists started to reinstitute, locally, the educational process cycle and transform the Ba’ath ideological curriculum which indoctrinated children’s freedom and opinions and for over five decades.

In mid-2012, Aleppo, local teachers opened houses and rearranged them, Ahmad Al-Qassim, a school manager in the organization said that ”Following the demonstration in the city, schools h across Aleppo city’s schools in the city were being used by the Assad’s militants as have been used as a head-quarter to torture civilians and later were transferred to military bases to bomb liberated areas in east Aleppo.”

According to Save Children’s annual report in December 2013 -A steep slump in education for Syrian children has been the most rapid in the history of the region. ”Education Interrupted” highlights that since 2011 nearly 3 million children from Syria have been forced to quit their education as fighting has destroyed classrooms, left children too terrified to go to school, or seen families flee the country. Progress achieved over decades has been reversed in under three years, the reported indicated. Similarly, the Guardian reported than over 2900 schools, across Syria have been whether destroyed or were being used for ”purposes other than education. Ensuite, pour se protéger face aux épidémies, et protéger les autres il priligy faut porter un masque chirurgical ou un masque FFP2. ”

Over the years, the circumstances sparked a new way of education quality within the available resources. Local activists and teachers kicked off schoolhouses at their homes socially, each in there is. ”For over half a century perpetuating his Ba’ath totalitarian ideology in our children and us to make a brainwashed generation that only follows and does not have their oneself, opinion and depicting fear in the society. Before the revolution, Al-Qasem also explained that, unlike how the educational system, concepts of children’s rights, liberty, diversity of opinions and plurality, have been systematically excluded, in contrast, instituted individualistic rule and sole ideas derived from the ruling Ba’athism. Following the swift territorial power dynamics of revolt expansion in 2012, the need for the facilitation of education became an imperative need that social initiatives could no longer operate in both gravity and financial capacity. Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) began coordinating on the ground to invest in education and bring back children to school desks.

Crystallizing Civil society corpus

Overseeing a decade of systematic
state violence, Assad’s regime disregarded the universal regulations of
Children’s Rights of protected children against violence, exploitation, abuse,
and neglect since Syria’s ratification of the Convection of Children Rights in
1989 by Assad’s father.

Last year Amnesty International reported that one of the attacks against Shiek-Idrees’s schools in east Idlib, a bombing against one of the village’s schools. While the regime has been breaching children’s rights, civil societies worked effortlessly thoroughly to reform the ”Syrian’s regime educational system” from being a teach-centered system to a children-centered one.” according to Kesh Malek’s education programs manager M.Kanjo. Nonetheless, acknowledging teachers’ fundamental role in the educational system.

The reasons behind this new approach of education, according to Kesh Malek’s center manager, that the Ba’athist regime has purposefully dismissed children and in contrast, the regime empowered teacher’s superiority to instill more, not only respect which is primary in the student-teacher relations. Fear, repressive and abusive the teacher of acting freely without being held ac- countable in case of violating children’s rights, to which UNICEF reported in 2009.

Educational organizations in Syria worked to transform the toxicity relationship between students and teachers to a friendly empowering of children. Since its establishment in 2012, Kesh Malek addressed this issue and worked on improving a new system that meets the international criterion for child rights protection. This embodiment resulted in children’s rights of the organization’s internal policy and followed with several steps advocating for children’s rights in donors and other related stakeholders. The new approach was applied to Kesh Malek’s funded schools by the organization to adhere to and implement deterring consequences if violating child-protection principles school’s staff occurs. ”These standards gradually became gradually widely implemented among Syrian civil organizations followed.”

Kanjo said, continuous advancement by the local NGOs to adopt these principles. Furthermore, Idlib educational administration declared its adoption and school’s full compliance with children-protection to make schools a violation-free environment where children practice their rights to learn and play.” “children should be the centered-priority of Syria’s future educational system”. He added.

Accelerated educational programs

The Informal Education {accelerated education} has impacted significantly student who suffers from “Educational Wastage” that has been steeply increasing due to dropping-off for multiple reasons. Bombardment, displacements, primarily, contributed to expand the magnitude of complicity in the educational level of students making a vast gap of how old children are and which year they should be.”

Hence, civil society
organizations devoted separate programs to study the scale of the problem and
launch new programs to enable those who missed schooling to recover the
educational gap. Samar, 17 years-old from Damascus East Ghouta initially,
however; alike over than three million Syrian children, have been displaced
over than eight times moving after having her house, school bombed by
Assad-Russian warplanes multiple times in 2017.

Samar explains that school for her has been a night- mare, after being a place where she used to study, meet and play with her friend. However, she lost count of the times schools were shut-down since 2012 until she was forcibly removed from East-Ghouta.

“I should be now preparing my bacilluria; however, I am still currently in the eighth class. I am frustrated that schools were shut for the past two months because of the attacks and just last week we had to move from our refuge house in Marat Al Numan because of the war- planes. I cannot recap what I have missed for the past years, and yet there are no alternatives to help me.”

Samar’s case, alike Ahed, 20 years-old who is originally from Aleppo and ended up in Aleppo’s countryside in Abzemo where Kesh Malek ran a program for children like her who lost years of education via Accelerated educational programs which gives students essential recap education that they need and compensate the ”educational wastage” they had been thoroughly.

When I resumed school, I could not understand the content of many subjects, such as math or the English… I was confused until we found this center that helped me to recapture and underpin my knowledge in many other school subjects too.” Ahed said.

Now I am able to go to school; however, I want to go again to the center and reduce the education gap by doing extra classes. I missed years of schooling, and I need to put myself in every opportunity to learn more in an intensive course.

According to the UNICEF report last year, it highlighted that there are 2.5 children registered as a refugee child outside Syria, while 2.6 are internally displaced. The report explains that since Jan last year the UN verified 74 attacks on schools and over 385 attacks against education facilities since 2014.

According to Enab baladi only 250 thousand students can access education out of 410 thousand in northern Syria as a result of the military campaign. On the other hand, 105 schools were targeted over the past few weeks out of 1194 in the province of Idlib.

Striving to survive

In the past two years, educational funds have been a constant dilemma for NGOs to carry on an effective instructional program. Northern Syria schools have been drying out of resources and necessary funds as a result of the security uncertainty and short-term funds for the local school to which leave school worrying about the future. Funds fluctuation has consequently undermined education progress towards its purpose in achieving a specific sustainable quality education that children need the most in such conflict zones. ”Resources sustainability is a key element for the success of any project, namely when it comes to education. According to Sarah, education manager in Kesh Malek, who said that this uncertainty has become more crucial as a whole generation is relying on and its failure to meet provide sustained-education system will ultimately affect Syria’s future and its capacity to reconcile and recover from the post-war conflict troubles and consequently jeopardize the peace and development process that this youth are striving to pursuit.”

Salah Aldin Hawa, deputy assistance of Aleppo education administrator echoed Sarah’s concerns about the overwhelming strife the educational sector is undergoing this year. “The majority of 270 schools in the province of Aleppo has no funds were nearly 2500 teachers are working to maintaining schooling; however, this sets education at risk of losing its teachers for financial reasons.”

Obscure withdraw of civil society’s educational pro- grams made schooling a challenging task following the exodus of refugees from different parts of Syria. As a result, Ahmad Essa, 31 years old teacher in Atma, said that teachers’ have been working for lengthily for low salaries and in many times teaching as a volunteer and effortlessly trying to maintain schools running.

Aleppo’s deputy assistance indicated that a great number of schools in northern-Syria ran out of service after having to shelter thousands of refugees or being targeted by airstrikes, leaving families in displacement. He reiterated the administration’s concerns that children, families need to have a safe place and food to think afterward of education and learning; otherwise, no progress or benefit of education will be harvested from this generation, decent life and food goes in parallel with education and can’t be separated.” he said. However, there has been an utter lack of funds for basic needs to run schools across north-west Syria generally, let alone building a small school in abandoned areas where refugees have recently migrated to. ”

Civil society is strenuously
working to maintain the current schools up and running. However; they ought to
do more and campaign to draw the world attention and all concerning donors and
stakeholders to rescue education in northern- Syria and retrieve what I call
investment in the future of Syria,”

In each camp, there must be a school to teach its children… this is what decision-makers should bear in mind they invest in funding aids or relief for displaced civilians, we need education as much as we need water and shelters. The camp teacher amplified.