UNIPATH STAFF
Huge smiles lit up the faces of the Iraqi children lining up outside the newly opened school in the Jadaa displacement camp. Many of these children had not seen a classroom in two years.
The Iraqi government, the United Nations and their partners are slowly trying to repair the damage done by the Daesh terror group, whose rule had a devastating impact on a generation of children.
Many parents simply refused to send their children to school during the Daesh occupation that began in 2014. The extremist group devised its own curriculum and printed textbooks that emphasized its twisted views of religion and obsessed over weapons and fighting.
“It was all about ammunition, military training and radical ideology,” said Sara Hassan, mother of one girl preparing for her first day at school in Jadaa. After a long hiatus under the brutal yoke of the extremists, getting the children accustomed to school is a challenge, teacher Khawla Hassan said.
“They are only starting to become focused again and are learning about the appropriate behavior to observe in class,” said Khawla Hassan, who teaches in one of the camp’s tents.
According to UNICEF, nearly 3.5 million school-age Iraqi children are missing out on education, and more than 600,000 displaced children have missed an entire school year.
Khawla Hassan said that when the first classes resumed in Qayyarah in December 2016, children from the same villages would sit together. She reorganized the classroom and got the children to mix to “create some fraternity.”
An average of 250 children are schooled in the Jadaa camp every day, although numbers vary as families are displaced and others return to villages retaken by Iraqi forces. Children focus on Arabic and English writing lessons, as well as math, science and Islamic studies. The latter is key to undoing indoctrination some children were subjected to under the extremists, said Mohammed Othman, who heads one of the two schools.
Other classes are designed to meet the needs of displaced children and teach them the importance of hygiene or how to avoid unexploded ordnance left behind by Daesh.
Nura Al Bajari, an Iraqi member of parliament from the province of Ninewa, where both Mosul and Qayyarah are located, said resuming education for children who have been out of school was key to Iraq’s post-Daesh future.
“These children talk only of blood and fighting. They need classes that focus on human rights and community life,” she said.
Sources: Agence France-Presse, Jordan Times