Feb 09

Sudan Conflict derails kids’ education

Analysis by Sudha Rajput
Due to the ongoing conflict in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan areas of Sudan, school-aged children have lost the opportunity to complete their basic education (similar to many situations of protracted displacement). Schools have been closed, and those that have remained open, transporting kids to the schools has been a challenge.

Consequently children’s educational years have been diverted to tending to domestic duties of collecting firewood and fetching water for the family. Some of the students that fled their villages during the conflict have been able to return, but many face an unknown future.

Those wanting to return are finding that the school capacity cannot accommodate them and those who can be accommodated find themselves either too young or too old to fit in with the given class curriculum.
In addition, there are issues of integrating the kids back into the classroom, who suffer from trauma of having escaped the violence to seek refuge in bushes and mountains. The experience of shelling and the conflict in general continues to haunt them. The returning IDP students need special support to address their psychological trauma and to catch up with what they had missed.

UNICEF, has built new classrooms at the school to accommodate the new arrivals and to provide a friendly environment for all the students. Challenge remains to have all those displaced children return to school.
Full story at:
http://www.unicef.org/sudan/media_9868.html
By Eman Eltigani
Feb 10, 2015

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Dr. Sudha G. Rajput is the author of Internal Displacement and Conflict: The Kashmiri Pandits in Comparative Perspective (Routledge). Her 31-year career at the World Bank touched on multiple aspects of international development, working on thirteen countries of the former Soviet Union. Her co-authored book chapters appear in Scientific Explorations of Cause and Consequence across Social Contexts (Praeger) and in State, Society, and Minorities in Southeast Asia (Lexington Books). She writes for the Forced Migration Review. Her doctoral research has investigated issues of conflict-induced displacement in Kashmir, with a focus on societal and policy reform, leading her efforts to the development of a graduate course, Refugees and IDP Issues, drawing students from fields of conflict resolution, international development, humanitarian assistance and peacebuilding. She is a Senior Researcher at the Refugee Law Initiative, a U.K. based think-tank. She is a Consultant/Trainer for USAID, designing and conducting capacity building workshops in Khartoum, Sudan, promoting cross-border co-existence. As a Professional Lecturer, at George Washington University, she teaches at the Elliott School of International Affairs, where she brings multi-disciplinary approaches to her course on Refugee and Migrant Crisis. She is a trainer for the Forage Center for Peacebuilding Education, where during a 4-day humanitarian assistance simulation, she coaches students on systematic understanding of protracted displacements. She teaches at the University of Maryland Global Campus, delivering the MBA program for the military students. Her interests on post-conflict issues include her past travels to: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Sudan, and Ukraine. Sudha’s blog on internal displacement can be found at www.internaldisplacement.info. Dr. Rajput lives in Washington, D.C. and can be reached at sudha_rajput@yahoo.com

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