One week before the start of the school year, the situation of schools in the center and north remains worrying, according to a recent Amnesty International report.
As the school year was postponed until October 9, Amnesty International released a report on September 22 alarming the plight of 150,000 children in the north and center of the country. They are deprived of schools because of the deterioration of security conditions.
Entitled “Mali, abuses committed in a context of increasing instability”, the report, which precedes the universal periodic review of human rights at the Security Council, though which Mali has to go in January 2018, indicates that “in June 2017, more than 500 schools were closed in the regions affected by the crisis, mainly in Gao, Kidal, Ségou, Mopti and Timbuktu”.
In the Center, in Diafarabé, Togue Mourardi and Sarro, presumed terrorists demanded the closure of schools to “transform them into a structure providing Qur’anic education”, while in the north of the country some signatory armed groups of the Peace and Reconciliation Agreement (APR) also continue to occupy some schools. “Although under Article 39 of the Algiers Peace Agreement, all sides agreed to pay particular attention to ensuring education for all”, the report said.
In April 2017, a report by the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinating Agency (OCHA) estimated at 270, the number of schools closed in the Mopti region. This had led some parents to send their children to the south of the country or in areas safe from insecurity to continue their schooling.
Sidi Ahmed S.