DAKAR (AlertNet) Â? Education may not be a priority in the mayhem of a natural disaster or a conflict Â? yet working schools serve many important purposes in emergencies, from providing tips on avoiding disease to protecting children from recruitment by militias, experts say.
During crises, many schools can be destroyed, closed or used as camps for the homeless, while teachers and pupils may leave fleeing violence or a force of nature.
More than 75 million young people of school age are caught up in crises worldwide and may not be able to attend school, says the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE).
"Education must be there from the very, very early stages of an emergency not only because it is a basic human right but because it is life-saving and life-sustaining," said Marian Hodgkin, the coordinator for partnerships and knowledge management at INEE.
"You can lose your home, you can lose your food, you can lose possessions, but education is something that can be carried by children and people affected by crisis."
Education provided by schools in emergency situations goes beyond grammar and arithmetic Â? pupils also learn how to maintain personal hygiene and avoid catching diseases, which spread fast in crowded displacement camps and in flooded areas, how to avoid stepping on a landmine and how to make peace with former rivals in an armed conflict.
Schools are a convenient place where aid agencies and governments can distribute food, counselling and other services to children.
"With children in these schools, it gives them the feeling that they are living a normal life because when they are not in school they risk being enrolled in armed groups," Sabine Jiekak, an education and protection officer in the Central African Republic (CAR) for COOPI, an Italian NGO.
In remote parts of the conflict-ridden CAR, former child soldiers begin re-integrating into their communities via schools, she added.
Relief groups that want to run or set up schools in crisis-hit areas have to overcome many hurdles: the difficulty of reaching those cut off by violence, flooding or destroyed or blocked roads; the absence of a suitable building and other facilities, the lack of teachers and, in conflict areas, parents' reluctance to let their children walk to school on their own.
Yaya Diarrassouba, the education officer for Save the Children in Ivory Coast, speaks from experience as has been working in areas controlled by rebels since 2003.
"Our role was to make parents understand that even in times of conflict it is important for their children to go to school," he said. "With teachers gone it was down to us to look into the communities to see who had an educational level to enable them to teach and we provided them with the teaching skills."
To help aid agencies and governments maintain school education, INEE recently launched a revised edition of its handbook for setting up education programmes in areas hit by a natural disaster or violence.
"These tools are to ensure that the education response we provide meets quality standards and is accountable to donors who help support humanitarian action, but also accountable to people affected by crises who have the right to good education," INEE's Hodgkin said.
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