'Combat for education': ECW empowers children ravaged by war to learn, heal, become 'future leaders'
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00:00 Thank you very much for being with us.
00:01 We're dedicating this next part of our program
00:04 to the vital work of the United Nations in trouble zones
00:07 to ensure children get education.
00:09 We're focusing on Nigeria in the northeast of the country
00:12 around the city of Maiduguri.
00:14 The Islamist extremists of Boko Haram terrorized the region.
00:16 Perhaps their most spectacular and shocking crime
00:19 was the kidnapping of some 276 schoolgirls
00:22 from their classrooms in a place called Chibok.
00:25 You may well remember.
00:26 It was all over the news at the time.
00:28 We're joined now by the Executive Director
00:30 of UN Education Cannot Wait.
00:32 She's Yasmin Sharif.
00:33 Yasmin, thank you very much for being with us.
00:35 How tough a task is it for young people
00:37 affected by years of terrorism to get back
00:40 to the business of learning and creating their future?
00:43 Thank you very much for having me.
00:46 Well, the northeast part of Nigeria
00:48 is seriously a dangerous area for young children,
00:52 boys and girls, as a result of the insurgency
00:56 caused by Boko Haram and splinter groups.
00:58 And I was there last week together with my team
01:02 and members of our executive committee,
01:05 Germany and Norway, seeing the results
01:08 of some of the work that we have done in our investments.
01:11 But there are over two million children
01:13 in northeast Nigeria that are not accessing school
01:16 as a result of the conflict.
01:18 So two million children not actively in school,
01:21 which if you think about how that pans out going forward,
01:25 it really is trapping people in a kind of
01:28 education poverty trap, isn't it,
01:30 in some way, shape or form.
01:32 But these children have seen and experienced
01:35 some horrific things, haven't they?
01:36 Can you give us some kind of background on that?
01:39 Well, you know, the way that Boko Haram
01:41 has put its objective is to destroy education.
01:45 So you can say that education is directly targeted
01:48 as a part of that insurgency.
01:52 And then girls are mostly affected because
01:56 they are abducted and brought into, what they say,
01:58 the bush, where they have their strongholds
02:02 and subjected to sexual abuse, rape,
02:05 forcibly early marriage, and completely removed
02:11 from any developmental or educational system
02:15 until they manage to escape.
02:18 And that's where we come in with our partners
02:21 on the ground, UNICEF, Save the Children,
02:23 Norwegian Refugee Council, and many local organisations
02:26 to address and try to reintegrate them into society.
02:30 And that is obviously an easy thing to say.
02:33 As you know, it's a very difficult thing to do
02:35 because childhood trauma has a horrible habit
02:38 of staying with someone right into adult life,
02:40 and then it gets repeated in the cycle
02:42 through families and handed down through generations,
02:45 which is a tragedy in itself.
02:47 You're investing a lot of money in the area.
02:50 I'm seeing the figure 15 million to scale up support
02:53 for education programmes.
02:54 How's that money going to be spent, Yasmin?
02:57 Well, we saw very concrete results on the ground.
03:00 We have previously invested 21, over $21 million.
03:05 And so we visited the schools that were run
03:08 by these organisations, and also another investment
03:12 in the Global Survivors Fund that was created
03:15 by Nobel Prize laureate, Dr. Mukherjee.
03:18 And we saw the utmost, the best top-notch mental health
03:23 and psychosocial services methodologies to help them come
03:27 out of that shell, and you so rightly mentioned
03:29 how this lives on traumatically
03:31 after generation and generation.
03:33 But they were actually liberated through this methodology.
03:37 We saw academic training, training of teachers,
03:41 proper schoolhouses.
03:43 Mind you that over 2,000 teachers have been killed
03:47 as a result of the conflict.
03:48 So recently trained teachers, material,
03:52 school feeding, nutrition.
03:54 We are giving them a holistic quality education,
03:57 and we are now about to invest another $15 million,
04:00 but more funding is needed.
04:02 We could do very well to reach the $2 million,
04:06 then another $50, $50 million,
04:09 if everyone came forward and contributed.
04:11 And can I just go back to that figure you were talking about,
04:14 about teachers being killed, because it stuck with me,
04:17 some 2,000 teachers being killed
04:20 during the Boko Haram reign of terror.
04:22 So it's about obviously helping children through,
04:25 and you mentioned the work of the Global Survivors Fund,
04:28 and that clearly is a massive challenge,
04:29 but also getting teachers trained and teachers involved.
04:33 Again, another huge challenge that you're facing.
04:35 - Well, you know, Nigeria is still,
04:38 it's a strong country apart from the Northeast
04:41 where you have the crisis and the conflict.
04:44 And the government of Nigeria is very committed to education
04:48 and have very good qualifications.
04:50 It's a strong, strong visionary leadership.
04:53 And the local population,
04:55 they want to challenge Boko Haram.
04:58 They want to empower the girls.
05:00 They want to empower the boys.
05:01 So there are many potential teachers
05:05 that are currently being trained
05:07 and are being invested in to take on the role.
05:10 But yes, it's a huge tragedy to lose 2,000 teachers.
05:14 But the Nigerian people in the Northeast
05:16 and the rest of the country are very strong people.
05:19 And that leads us to the AU ambition
05:22 for 2024 declaration,
05:25 education in Africa for the 21st century.
05:28 It certainly applies to Nigeria among many others.
05:31 - We've seen propaganda footage
05:32 of the Boko Haram leader, Shekau,
05:34 who may or may not be alive.
05:35 We're not sure where he is right now.
05:37 We understand he's probably dead,
05:38 but we know that the influence of Boko Haram
05:41 may still exist in certain places.
05:43 Is that threat still there?
05:44 Is that something you felt when you were in the region?
05:47 - I cannot say that I felt it when I was in Madjuguri.
05:50 However, based on discussions with United Nations security
05:54 and colleagues on the ground,
05:56 it appears that they are splitting up
06:00 and are not as strong as they used to be.
06:02 There are splinter groups being created,
06:05 but the threat is still there.
06:08 Their terror activities are still there.
06:11 However, the army of Nigeria
06:14 has become stronger in combating them, yes.
06:18 And our, sorry, sorry.
06:20 - No, no, you finish please, Yasmin.
06:22 Your words are far more important than mine.
06:24 Go ahead, go ahead.
06:25 - No, but in combination with that,
06:28 our role is to wage our combat for education.
06:32 And that's what we do by investing more funding
06:35 in girls and boys education.
06:37 That's also another way of opposing that.
06:39 - You told us earlier that boys and girls
06:41 were equally victim to the kind of humiliation
06:45 that came with the terrorism.
06:48 The spectacular case that perhaps captured
06:50 everybody's imagination from Madjuguri,
06:53 right across the sea to the White House at the time,
06:56 remember Michelle Obama posting online
06:58 in support of the Chibok school girls,
07:01 276 school girls kidnapped,
07:03 subjected to forced marriage, rape,
07:06 the whole litany of torture, if you like, and humiliation.
07:11 And one wonders how they get back
07:12 to any kind of normal life after that.
07:14 Do you have any kind of update Yasmin
07:16 on how those girls might be doing?
07:18 I know your mission wasn't specifically about them,
07:20 but I suspect it might've come
07:22 into the conversation somewhere.
07:24 - Well, there are many of those girls and we met,
07:29 you know, we were in four different schools
07:33 and transition centers run by our partners.
07:36 And the majority is girls,
07:38 even if they didn't belong to that group,
07:40 our girls have gone through the same experiences.
07:44 And I can say, I was hugely impressed to see
07:48 they had arrived very subdued.
07:50 They had been out in no man's, you know,
07:54 under no support from government controlled areas,
07:59 living in the forest or in the jungles
08:02 and come out of that very deeply traumatized.
08:05 And now we saw them going through the education
08:08 and the school confident, like Queens.
08:11 These girls were like Queens and they were strong
08:14 and they are gonna be the future leaders.
08:16 And you could see that confidence
08:17 and the results of the impact of the education investments
08:21 that we have done with the partners that I have mentioned.
08:24 And the same applies to the boys.
08:25 I mean, they may not be sexually abused, some are,
08:29 but they also use, they're forcibly used to bear arms
08:34 and be mobilized into this terror organization
08:38 and to let go of that and become productive members
08:43 of the society and to see them enjoying learning.
08:46 These are amazing, fantastic testimonies
08:51 to what we can do if we invest in education.
08:53 - Jasmin, your words are sending shivers down my spine.
08:56 This idea that you've met the girls, they've come back.
09:00 And as you use your word, you say they're like Queens now.
09:03 They're really starting to be confident, stride forward.
09:06 Do you see them maybe going forward in that way,
09:10 bringing people with them,
09:11 educating those who've suffered as well
09:14 and really becoming leaders,
09:15 becoming real community leaders?
09:16 Is that what you're saying?
09:18 - Absolutely.
09:19 I mean, when we went to the Global Survivors Fund
09:23 and I just mentioned one of them,
09:25 all of those working there are survivors themselves.
09:29 So they survived, they recovered,
09:33 and they became even stronger.
09:35 And now they are receiving abducted girls who have escaped.
09:40 So that's the beauty of working with the local population
09:45 because they have gone through it, they've experienced it.
09:47 And they know, I always say,
09:49 abnormal problems require extraordinary solutions.
09:53 And they have that
09:54 because they've been into that abnormal environment.
09:57 And they are extremely creative,
09:59 very strong, very resilient.
10:01 - This is a, it's a really positive message
10:03 you've brought back from there,
10:04 but clearly there is a lot of work still to do.
10:06 That is one of the issues.
10:07 You mentioned that the boys had specific problems as well.
10:11 And obviously there's the issue of child soldiers
10:13 that perhaps is something you could tell us about.
10:15 - Well, the boys, I mean, I met with a group of boys
10:19 who had just escaped.
10:22 They have never been to a school in their life.
10:24 And they have to start sitting on the floor,
10:27 learning basic A, B, C, D,
10:30 and they are 13, 14, 15 years old.
10:33 And you could see the difference between them
10:36 and boys or girls who had been around
10:38 and gone through this education.
10:40 They were very excited, but they were also,
10:44 the eyes were hollow, they still had fears.
10:47 And trauma is not something that is processed overnight.
10:51 It takes a lot of investment and you could clearly see
10:55 in their worn out clothes, their hollow eyes,
10:58 and still that little light of hope,
11:01 wanting to return to society again.
11:04 And I don't know what they have done
11:07 or what they have gone through exactly,
11:09 but they have come out of a very dark place.
11:12 That was so clear.
11:13 - Yasmin, if you don't mind,
11:14 we've got a short amount of time left.
11:16 Can I ask you about the situation in Gaza right now?
11:19 Because perhaps people could draw a parallel
11:22 with what these children have been through
11:23 and what children in the Gaza Strip
11:25 are going through right now.
11:26 Circumstances are different, I know,
11:28 but the bottom line is their education is stopped
11:30 and they're experiencing trauma.
11:32 What do you see for the children of Gaza, Yasmin?
11:35 - Thank you very much.
11:37 And I'll try to be as fast as possible
11:38 because there's a lot to be said.
11:41 One, it's very difficult to compare
11:43 human suffering for children.
11:45 Everyone has their own context
11:47 and have their own experiences.
11:49 But so I don't want to make that comparison
11:52 as suffering is suffering.
11:53 However, for the children in Gaza,
11:55 and I have worked in the area and I've seen it
11:57 and we have invested in UNRWA schools in the past.
12:00 Today, according to UNICEF,
12:02 Gaza is the most dangerous place on earth
12:05 for a child in the entire world.
12:07 And as all my UN colleagues
12:09 and civil society colleagues have said,
12:11 and I've been in this business
12:12 of working for humanitarians and development
12:14 in 34 years,
12:16 I have never ever seen anything like Gaza
12:19 in my entire lifetime of professional life.
12:22 So let's hope, and I will echo the call
12:25 by our Secretary General,
12:27 we need an urgent humanitarian ceasefire now.
12:31 We cannot continue.
12:33 Their education, there are over half a million children
12:35 in Gaza without any education at all whatsoever.
12:39 Schools destroyed.
12:40 And there are 1 million children,
12:42 1 million, all of them, 100%,
12:45 that are deeply, deeply traumatized.
12:46 And as you said, can go on for generation to generation.
12:50 It's got to stop.
12:52 - Yasmin Sharif, Executive Director
12:53 of Education Cannot Wait, UN Education Envoy.
12:58 I think Ms. Wormwave described you,
13:00 but it's so much broader what you do.
13:02 And thank you so much for coming on our channel
13:04 and telling us about what you were doing in Nigeria
13:06 and your thoughts about Gaza.
13:07 I appreciate you sharing that with us.
13:08 Thank you, Yasmin, very much indeed.
13:10 Yasmin Sharif there from the UN Education Cannot Wait program.
13:15 We take a short break.
13:16 After that, it's our Eye on Africa.
13:17 Stay with us for that.
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