Attacks by the Taliban and other militant groups are having a devastating impact on education in Pakistan, according to a new Human Rights Watch report released on Monday.

Pakistan faces significant challenges in education, with an estimated 25 million children out of school.

Threats to education in Pakistan were highlighted by the attacks on future Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai on October 9, 2012, and the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, 2014.

After the Peshawar attack, which killed 135 children, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had announced a 20-point National Action Plan to comprehensively deal with terrorism. However, none of the 20 points pertained to students or education.

The 71-page report, Dreams Turned into Nightmares: Attacks on Students, Teachers, and Schools in Pakistan, is based on 48 interviews conducted with teachers, students, parents, and school administrators in Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The report includes testimonials of how militant violence has disrupted the education of hundreds of thousands of children, particularly girls.

The report also examines the occupation of educational institutions by security forces, political groups, and criminal gangs.

“The Taliban and other militants have repeatedly committed horrific attacks on Pakistani schools, depriving students of their lives as well as their educations,” says Bede Sheppard, child rights deputy director at HRW, in the report.

“These audacious attacks often occur because, too often, authorities have protected militants or failed to properly prosecute them, and this needs to change.”

The Pakistani government should take urgent steps to make schools safer, and fairly prosecute those responsible for attacks against schools, students, and teachers, the report suggests.

Also read: School bombings fail to scare away girl students

Harrowing stories

A Taliban commander claiming the attack on Bacha Khan University in KP in January 2016 said, “We will continue to attack schools, colleges, and universities across Pakistan as these are the foundations that produce apostates.”

“I was in my room in the hostel with some other students when I heard the sound of heavy firing. We locked ourselves in the room. We could hear firing and footsteps. The militants knocked at our door, asking us to open. I hid under the bed in my room. They eventually broke the door and came in.

"They killed five of my friends in front of me. Then they left the room. After a few minutes, the militants came in again to check if anyone was alive. They did not look under the bed. But they lobbed a grenade in the room and left. I was very seriously injured by the grenade splinters. I was in the hospital for 20 days. I suffer from nightmares and panic attacks,” the report quotes Asim (pseudonym) as saying. He was a student at Bacha Khan University, Charsadda, KP.

The report also documents attacks by militants from January 2007 to October 2016 that have destroyed school buildings, targeted teachers and students, and terrorised parents into keeping their children out of school.

Ali Hussain (pseudonym), a father of an affected student in Hangu, KP, had this to say:

“Nobody thought that the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi would attack a school. School is supposed to be a place of safety of our children. For many days after the attack, my son couldn’t go to school. I also didn’t want him to. There is police security at the school now, but on most days that is just one police constable. We have tried to put together a team of local volunteers to guard the school. But what can we do when faced with a suicide attacker?”

Attacks on girls

The HRW says attacks have often been directed at female students and their teachers and schools in an attempt to block girls’ access to education.

After the Taliban took over large parts of the Swat Valley in KP in 2007, they began a violent campaign against education for girls. Over 900 girls schools were forced to close and over 120,000 girls stopped attending school. About 8,000 female teachers were driven out of work.

For many girls, the loss was permanent and they did not return to school even after the Army had displaced the Taliban, the report reveals.

Lack of official data on attacks on students

The Pakistani government does not collect specific data on the number of attacks on schools and universities, or the number of deaths and injuries from such attacks. However, according to the Global Terrorism Database, there were 867 attacks on educational institutions in Pakistan from 2007 to 2015, resulting in 392 fatalities and 724 injuries.

The Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack recorded at least 838 attacks on schools in Pakistan between 2009 and 2012, leaving hundreds of schools damaged.

In December 2015, the Ministry for States and Frontier Regions reported that in 2015, 360 schools were destroyed in three of the seven regions of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).

The government’s failure to keep consistent and transparent national data on such attacks raises serious concerns about its ability to track repairs of damaged schools, identify trends that could inform protective measures, or investigate and prosecute the responsible individuals, the HRW report says.

Vulnerability of educational institutions

In some areas, government forces have used educational institutions, including both schools and college hostels, as temporary or permanent barracks or military bases.

When educational facilities are used for military purposes, it places them at increased risk of attack, the HRW says.

Quoting an official report from the KP government, the HRW report says 222 schools were partially occupied and 63 schools were entirely occupied by displaced families or security forces.

This also prevents or limits schools’ ability to teach students, the report adds.

The government should issue clear and public orders to Pakistan security forces to curtail the military use of schools, the HRW says.

"Pakistan should develop a comprehensive policy for protecting students — especially girls — and teachers, schools, and universities from attack and military use, and engage all concerned ministry staff at the central and local level in implementing this strategy," the report suggests.

Flawed policy for security of educational institutions

"The government has adopted new security measures, including training teachers in use of arms, mock security drills, and raising boundary walls," says the report.

However, the measures are inadequate.

"Despite hundreds of attacks on teachers, students, and educational institutions, the Pakistani government has not successfully prosecuted the perpetrators in most instances. This failure was highlighted in June 2015, when it was reported that eight out of the 10 individuals arrested and charged for the attack on Malala Yousafzai were acquitted, even after they all confessed to their role in court."

The report suggests that the federal government should cooperate with provincial authorities to create an advance rapid response system whenever there are attacks on schools, so that these facilities are quickly repaired or rebuilt and destroyed educational material is replaced so that children can return to school as soon as possible.

"Before the APS attack our school had no security guard. After the attack, the government has provided us with one guard. It is a big school with more than 400 students and two gates. One security guard is not sufficient," the report quotes Shamim Ara (pseudonym), principal at a government boys’ middle school in Lahore.

She further says that when the guard goes for lunch or a prayer break one of the older students, aged 15-16, takes over the responsibility of guarding the gate.

"Three of our students have been given a basic tutorial on handling a firearm by the security guard and they can stand as his substitute when he is temporarily away."

"I understand that this is not desirable or safe. However, I don’t see any other option of ensuring a minimum level of security," she added.

Govt urged to endorse Safe Schools Declaration

The report further proposes that during the reconstruction of educational institutions, students should be provided education through alternative means and, where appropriate, given psychosocial support.

"Pakistan should endorse the Safe Schools Declaration, a non-binding political agreement opened for state support at an international conference in Oslo, Norway, in May 2015," suggests the report.

"Countries that endorse the Safe Schools Declaration pledge to restore access to education when schools are attacked, and undertake to make it less likely that students, teachers, and schools will be attacked in the first place," the report says.

“The Pakistani government should do all it can to deter future attacks on education, beginning with improving school security and providing the public reliable information on threats,” says the child rights deputy director at HRW.

“Attacks on education not only harm the students and families directly affected, but also have an incalculable long-term negative effect on Pakistani society.”