UN agency says attacks on Afghan schools tripled in 2018
A new report by the United Nations children’s agency says the number of attacks on schools in Afghanistan nearly tripled in the past year.
UNICEF said in a report on Tuesday that attacks on Afghan schools increased from 68 in 2017 to 192 in 2018.
“Education is under fire in Afghanistan,” UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in a statement. “The senseless attacks on schools; the killing, injury and abduction of teachers; and the threats against education are destroying the hopes and dreams of an entire generation of children.”
The report said, however, that using schools as voter registration centers for parliamentary elections last year had been one factor that led to the increase in the number of the attacks, as militants targeted such centers during the voting period.
In June last year, UNICEF had said that about 3.7 million schoolchildren between the ages of seven and 17 — accounting for almost half of all school-aged children in Afghanistan — did not attend school.
A Taliban regime that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 opposed education for girls. After it was toppled in a US-led invasion, millions of girls began to receive formal education, but they continue to face difficulties.
Schools, students, and teachers have been coming under attacks by the militant group.
Last month, gunmen blew up a girls’ school in the western Farah Province. The incident followed the killing of a school teacher in the northern Faryab Province earlier this month.
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