When natural disasters hit Schools

Natural disasters are nearly impossible to avoid even in supposedly modernized world today. Millions of people are affected by natural disasters every year, and the impact could be catastrophic. Floods, wind and storms, earthquakes, drought, volcanic eruption, and tsunamis cause 400 national disasters worldwide, an average of 74,000 deaths, affecting more than 230 million people every single year.

The United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) in a tweet, widely used social media site to disseminate information, said that about 175 school going people are affected by natural disasters each year. Most of them face disruption to schooling. So when natural disaster hits a country or region, children of that area count to the most affectees, suffering not only from psychological traumas, diseases but also school closures.

A tweet by United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef)on May 20 ahead of Moonsoon season in most flood affected regions.

Natural disasters are not equally devastating for every country on globe. Countries with good economic and infrastructural backgrounds recover more quickly. With better institutions they are able to avoid the factors that delay restoration efforts after the natural disaster. Schools will reopen more quickly, because these countries have resources to repair the damage more quickly or transfer the students to the areas not damaged by disaster.

However countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan and Caribbean countries take years to repair damage caused by these disasters. In eight years from 2000 to 2008 about 26 natural disasters hit Caribbean countries, disrupting schooling of 500,000 children, damaging at least 52% of school buildings. The economic value of damage to the sector was approximately US$ 2.8 billion.

In some part of these countries, natural disasters hit again and again every year, making it impossible for rehabilitation efforts to be completed.  Every time a disaster hit, masses of children were excluded from schools, many never to return.

Worldwide approximately 875 million school going children live in high seismic risk zones, with 32 million newly enrolled in primary education. In Pakistan alone, about 11,906 schools attended by more than one million children have been affected or used as shelter (2,674 in Sindh) or damaged (9,232schools) in Sindh (8,820), Baluchistan (297) and Punjab (115), in 2010 floods, hindering the teaching process to resume.

As this threat continued to grow, national and international agencies failed to keep their commitments regarding education of children affected by natural disasters, which used to damage their hard won educational right every year. It is dilemma of our modernized society as when there were no plans for alternative locations for schools or alternative sources of education, many of these will never be able to catch up and many never attend school again in their whole life.

It was expected that the average number of natural disasters will increase by 320 percent in next 20 years. So keeping that in mind, planning should be aimed to have schools which are a source of normalcy and safety for children in case of any disaster. There are much talks now to educate future generations on proper training and preparations to respond a disaster. In Japan, they used to train school children to prepare for natural disasters and to ease the impacts once devastation has struck their families and homes. Teaching basic concepts of risk reduction, climate change and sustainable practices can also be very helpful. We can see practical use of these skills in Philippines where in 2006 torrential rains proved havoc to the region, however, children and their communities were evacuated before landslides destroyed their homes as per early training by the ministry of education about early warning systems and responding to the climate change.

In underdeveloped countries infrastructures were weak so relief efforts like reopening of schools and education through more safe sources become slow. Disasters have psychological affects on children and going school provide them normalcy. Schools open months later and in some regions of developing world it takes years to resume educational activities in regions affected every year.

Most important thing in this regard is early preparedness to reduce devastating effects on education, especially in regions frequently hit by floods and earthquakes.  Modern technology could be made available for students in this regard, like use of cell phones for taking online lectures to minimise risks for their schooling.

The writer is a research student at University of central Punjab and a working journalist.