Specific examples are numerous. in nigeria, the armed group Boko haram abducted hundreds of women and girls in major attacks in 2014. Between 2012 and 2014, the group killed 314 children in schools in north-eastern 167 nigeria. from the start of the group’s insurgency to the end of 2015, more than 600 teachers had been killed and more than 1,200 schools damaged or destroyed.168 Teachers and children also have been attacked, kidnapped and killed in Yemen, the Syrian arab republic and many other countries. in 2014 alone, there were 163 attacks on schools in afghanistan; nine schools were attacked in the Central african republic; and there were 67 reported attacks on schools in iraq.169 BOx 2.2 THE DESTRUCTIvE IMPACT OF ARMED CONFLICT ON EDUCATION Conflict has immediate and often life-threatening effects available to them. The language of instruction is a major on children. It also holds back the development of the factor hindering their ability to continue their education. In education systems that should be functioning to help them addition, in most countries where refugees settle, Syrian reach their full potential. Recent experience in the Syrian teachers are not employed in the public system. Arab Republic has shown how conflict can halt and even reverse progress on education. But it is not just the Syrian Arab Republic where education is interrupted by conflict. In Gaza, nearly 500,000 children In 2010, before the current crisis began, nearly all of the were unable to return to classrooms at the start of country’s primary-school-aged children and 90 per cent the 2014/15 school year because of damage to school of lower-secondary-school-aged children were enrolled infrastructure. In yemen, conflict had closed thousands of in school. Five years later, some 2.1 million children aged schools and pushed 1.8 million children out of education 5 to 17 in the Syrian Arab Republic were not in school. In as of August 2015, adding to the 1.6 million who were addition, about 700,000 school-age Syrian refugee children out of school before the violence there escalated. In the – half of the school-age refugee population – were out of Sudan, war that has lasted decades in some areas has school in neighbouring states. deprived more than 3 million children of an education. Armed conflicts in the Central African Republic, the More than half of the nearly 4.6 million refugees who have Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan fled the conflict are children, many now facing a future have stalled progress in areas already marked by chronic without the hope that comes with education. Neighbouring deficits in education. states have struggled to cope with this influx. With support from donors, the Government of Lebanon has introduced In DRC, where conflict has been ongoing since 1993, an innovative system that accommodates large numbers more than 3.5 million children of primary school age are of out-of-school refugee children by creating a two-shift out of school. Even so, recent data show primary school system in public schools. About 150,000 refugee children attendance has been increasing steadily – from 51 per have entered Lebanon’s public school system in this way. cent in 2001 to 87 per cent in 2013. Meanwhile, the gaps in attendance between boys and girls, children living in yet there is still a large gap between the education needs urban versus rural areas, and those from the richest and of Syrian refugee children and the learning opportunities poorest households have all been narrowing.170 Source: UneSCo institute for Statistics and United nations Children’s fund, Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All: Findings from the Global Initiative on Out-of- School Children, UiS, Montreal, 2015, p. 49. United nations Children’s fund, Syria Crisis Education Strategic Paper, london 2016 Conference paper, UniCef, new York, January 2016, p. 1. United nations high Commissioner for refugees, ‘education Sector Situation analysis’ for november and december 2015, found on the Syria regional refugee response website, , accessed 12 January 2016. United nations Children’s fund regional office for the Middle east and north africa, Education under Fire: How conflict in the Middle East is depriving children of their schooling, UniCef, amman, 3 September 2015, p. 6. Global Partnership for education, democratic republic of Congo page, , accessed 8 april 2016; MICS 2001 and 2010; DHS 2007 and 2013–2014. The STaTe of The World’S Children 2016 53