IRAQ: Focus on getting children back to school

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

BAGHDAD, 7 Dec 2004 (IRIN) - Children walking home from school in the quiet Jadriya neighbourhood in southern Baghdad say they’re frightened by how violent their country is these days.

But the daily explosions and mortar attacks aren’t keeping them from going to school. Watching a shooting between police and a private car outside the school the other day was scary, but it was almost like a movie, because no one got hurt, Ali Thaer, 10, told IRIN.

“There were clashes by our school when US troops fought someone in a car," Thaer said. “I ran away. It was so loud. But later I heard that the police caught the men.”

Other students say a teacher was killed near their former school in another part of Baghdad because a missile landed on his house. Random mortar attacks have become increasingly common across the capital in recent months - most aimed at the heavily fortified “green zone” where thousands of US and Iraqi administrators and contractors live.

Saddam Hussein’s former Republican Guard palace is in a 2 km sq area in the centre of the city.

"We heard bombing at the palace across the river today, but it is so common and nobody said anything," Mustafa Hassan, 13, told IRIN.

The girls walk together to school so they feel safer, Amna Thaer, 12, Thaer's sister, told IRIN. Her parents are worried, but they haven’t started making her and her brother walk with them to school yet, they said.

But many other parents now walk their children to and from school, Nadhima Abbas, told IRIN. The grandmother watches her three grandchildren for their mother every afternoon when they get home.

"We are worried about them, but it is better for them to be at school than in the house, where they won't learn anything," Abbas said. "God will watch over them and a guard is also at the school."

However, in other neighbourhoods teachers see many absences, day in and day out, they say. In cities where there is fighting, including Fallujah, about 60 km west of Baghdad, where most families have fled, and in Latifiyah, south of the capital, schools are closed.

Getting children to go back to school is the goal of a United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) backpack giveaway programme. Children from the first through to ninth grades are receiving backpacks, notepads, pencils and crayons as part of a US $40 million programme.

Through the Ministry of Education, UNICEF has started distributing more than 6 million school bags and supplies around the country. Because of security concerns, UNICEF sent bags directly to the 18 governorates through the ministry.

Students in Jadriyah are from mostly middle-class academic families who live near their work at Baghdad University. They understand the value of learning and can afford to spend the basic amount needed to buy pencils and paper so the children can go to school.

“We already have these things, so we don’t need new backpacks,” Ali Amer, 14, told IRIN, proudly showing off his navy book bag.

His friend Ayman Mohammed agreed, telling IRIN that last year the students also got book bags with new books inside, so now they’re very happy. “I had that book bag, but I like this one even better, so I gave it to my brother,” Mohammed said.

But many students don’t have any school materials at all, which also keeps them at home, a teacher at Al Wahada al-Arabiya girls primary school told IRIN, declining to be named. “Many poor families cannot afford these things, so they came to school to pick them up”.

Children are always scared the schools will be bombed, so teachers are trying to invite the families to come to school anyway, the teacher said. “We visit them in their homes, the teachers and the headmasters, trying to convince them to send their children to school regularly,” the teacher said.

UNICEF received financial support from the governments of Japan, Canada, Denmark and Luxembourg, the European Commission, the Spanish national committee for UNICEF and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

[ENDS]