With 500 attacks on schools recorded in just six months, 2017 is shaping up as a record year for the number of schools bombed and destroyed in war zones like Yemen, South Sudan and Syria, a UN official said Friday.
In 2016, the world body in was able to verify 753 attacks on schools and hospitals in 20 countries rid by conflict, as it sought to track violence and find ways to better protect children around the world.
Virginia Gamba, the UN special representative for children in armed conflict, told an informal Security Council meeting that attacks appeared to be on the rise this year.
“It is no consolation that in the last six months alone, over 500 schools have already been attacked, which means we might be able to break this record at the end of this year,” Gamba told the council.
Targeting schools and hospitals during armed conflict is considered a violation of international humanitarian law and war crime.
In just three months, from April to June, the United Nations has verified 174 attacks on schools in the Democratic Republic of Congo, most of which took place in the Kasai region, Gamba said.
Last week, the UN put the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen on a blacklist of child rights violators for carrying out 38 attacks on schools and hospitals in 2016, killing and maiming 683 children.
Three quarters of all attacks on schools in Yemen were carried out by coalition air strikes, while in Syria, two thirds of them were bombardments by government forces or their allies.
Gamba stressed that the number of attacks for last year was “much higher” because the report only focused on incidents that the UN was able to verify.
