Education for All > Background Documents > Mid-Decade Meeting 1996 > Education in emergencies: Helping communities cope Emergency aid today can be as old-fashioned as a teacher with a blackboard. After a massacre, or a devastating cyclone, the first requirement is obviously to save lives. But as soon as shelter, food and a minimum health service are provided, there is a growing awareness among specialists that education helps a community cope. Recent interviews with authorities in devastated countries reveal the major role that education plays in healing and rehabilitating. While educators have always known of the long-term development effects of education, they are increasingly recognizing the immediate benefit in creating a force for continuity, and stability. Laurien Ngirabanzi, the Rwandan Minister of Education, said: "In April 1994 more than 60 per cent of all our teachers were killed or fled the country. Teachers were prime targets of the genocide because they had standing in the village and usually spoke their minds. Five months after, we reopened the schools. The buildings had been destroyed, all teaching materials were taken, but going to school proved to be extremely important, as it gave a sense of rhythm and stability." In 1994 alone, some 24 million people world-wide were driven by conflict to seek a safe haven in neighbouring countries, and an estimated 27 million people were displaced within their own countries. The aftermath of tragedy -- the subsequent displacement of communities, the disintegration of families and social structures, lack of nutritional security -- can be just as bad as the tragedy itself. Education is one way to combat the negative effects of displacement, destitution, neglect, abuse, exploitation, trauma and emotional and psychological pain. A school in a box That is why UNICEF and UNESCO have developed a "School-in-a-box" for teachers in Rwanda and nearby refugee camps. The Teacher's Emergency Pack (TEP) is a blue tin trunk, containing the most simple ingredients for a school: activity guides, slates, chalk, pencils, erasers, exercise books, story books, blackboard paint, record and attendance books and small games. This allows teachers to hold classes for about eighty students a day for six months. The emergency curriculum includes lessons in mathematics and in Kinyarwanda, the indigenous language. "Taking children to school is extremely important - it is the only sign of normalcy in a world that otherwise is totally scattered," says Pilar Aguilar, chief of UNICEF's education programme in Rwanda. UNICEF, UNESCO and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) all have special programmes for war-traumatized children in Slovenia and Croatia. Former Yugoslavia has an estimated 1.5 million traumatized children, and international donors are supporting special training seminars for teachers and school psychologists. Radio programmes such as "Colorful Wall" is aimed at children aged 5 through 14, encouraging them to communicate their views. It also provides entertainment, educational and psychological support. But most war-torn countries want trauma victims to be integrated into their school systems, not kept separate in a parallel education. This is not just a budgetary concern, but an attempt to bring back "normalcy". Ms Graca Machel, head of UNESCO's National Commission of Mozambique, a country emerging from twenty years of civil war, says: "Education is the only way to rebuild life and give a sense of the future. Why? Because the war targeted the family, the social institutions, and whatever makes life human. Soldiers were abducting children, drugging them, sending them to villages to kill or detaining them in prison. What type of adults would they become? What would they be as fathers of a new generation? We fail to recognize the impact of war on education. We have to look at the emotional, psychological and cultural impact in healing trauma." Despite the horrors of war, the process of reconstruction is an opportunity for major reform. For instance, Rwanda and Mozambique are planning a new curriculum for all children which will include classes in peace, tolerance and human rights. In war-torn Afghanistan, the BBC and UNESCO have launched radio soap operas which provide basic education through entertaining drama. In Lebanon, the Government and 240 non-governmental organizations have teamed up with UNICEF to bring together youth and children practising different religions and coming from various regions of the country, and re-engage them in activities that breakdown barriers and prejudices built up during more than sixteen years of war. Gender inequality Part of the growing consensus is that emergency relief needs to go beyond helping people merely to survive, and should nurture, heal and develop the quality of life of survivors and help them reintegrate into society. This has naturally focused attention on the problem of refugees. Their social and emotional well-being as survivors is now an integral part of emergency relief. Traditionally, education was seen as a long-term process and refugee status as a short-term phenomenon, but now these cliches are being reversed. Studies indicate that most refugees are in their host countries to stay. War and conflict also aggrevate gender inequality in education and often make educating women and girls difficult. According to Ms Huda Seif of the United Nations Development Office for Somalia, "the endemic violence here is so bad, the danger of police raids and rapes so terrible that most girls do not go to school after second grade. And there are no female teachers at all in the entire country in the third grade." Yet, when peace is restored the relative lack of men places a special emphasis on the need to educate women: for instance in Rwanda today, in the wake of the recent genocide, 70 per cent of the population is female, so the government there is launching a special programme to develop girls' education. The focus of the media and of international donors on headline-catching emergencies leaves one gaping problem pointed out by Barry Sesnan of UNHCR in Uganda: "The problem with emergency education is: What do you do when the emergency is over and everybody has gone home except for you and the children? If teachers don't keep getting the support and money in non-emergency situations, motivation drops." Not all emergencies are as "loud" and visible as natural disasters or civil strife. Persistent poverty, the growing number of street children, and the rising tide of death caused by HIV/AIDS are silent, chronic emergency situations. Despite their silent nature, these emergencies have an equally devastating effect on individuals, communities and nations.