Bennouna Cyril, van Boetzelaer Elburg, Rojas Lina, Richard Kinyera, Karume Gang, Nshombo Marius, Roberts Leslie, Boothby Neil
MPH is a Senior Advisor on Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation at the Center on Child Protection and Wellbeing, University of Indonesia, Indonesia.
MPH is a Researcher with the Program on Forced Migration and Health, Columbia University, United States.
Disasters. 2018 Apr;42(2):314-335. doi: 10.1111/disa.12245. Epub 2017 Aug 9.
The United Nations' Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism is charged with documenting six grave violations against children in a time of conflict, including attacks on schools. Many of these incidents, however, remain unreported across the globe. This study explores whether or not a local knowledge base of education and child protection actors in North and South Kivu Provinces, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in Mogadishu, Somalia, could contribute to a more complete record of attacks on education in those areas. Hundreds of semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants across the three settings, and in total 432 attacks on education were documented. Purposive samples of these reports were verified and a large majority was confirmed. Local non-governmental organisations and education institutions were most knowledgeable about these incidents, but most never reported them to a monitoring authority. The study concludes that attack surveillance and response were largely insufficient, and recommends investing in mechanisms that utilise local knowledge to address these shortcomings.
