Analysis of UN and NGO Rights Rhetoric in Addressing Terror Attacks on Education: The Implications for Schoolchildren’s Security Interests

Abstract

Let us turn now to a closer look at key reports by UNESCO, UNICEF, CARE and Human Rights Watch concerning attacks on schools, schoolchildren, education personnel and education aid workers in Afghanistan. The problem of terror directed at education in Afghanistan in many ways reflects what is happening in this respect in other conflict-affected States. The reports provide some insight into the scope of the organized systemic terror threat to schools globally and the inadequacies of the international community’s response to the same. We will consider the valuable data provided in these reports, but also importantly some of the inadequacies of the discourse of the reports that mirrors in large part that adopted by the international community as a whole. Our meta-purpose then is to: (a) consider the propaganda value of the particular way in which the issue of terror attacks on education is framed by international humanitarian groups and certain organs of the U.N. in these reports and (b) to contemplate the implications for children’s security interests of the use of children’s schooling as a counter-terrorist propaganda tool.