By Georgie Falize / GICJ
Introduction
War does not end at the school gates. When a school is attacked, the damage is measured in futures, not rubble. Every year, on the 9th of September, the International Community observes the International Day to Protect Education from Attack, established by the UN General Assembly in 2020 through Resolution 74/275. The Day exists to confront a reality that is too often reduced to statistics: when education is attacked, children lose far more than lessons. They lose routine, opportunity, and in some cases, the possibility of returning to school at all. Thus, protecting education is a human rights imperative. A damaged school can be rebuilt, but the years of learning lost to violence are far harder to restore. Hence, safeguarding education means safeguarding a community’s ability to imagine a future beyond war.
Can education survive attack? The resilience of human communities.
The 2026 theme set by UNESCO ‘Can education survive attack? The resilience of human communities' has been put forward to emphasise the endurance of education during times of conflict, placing focus on what happens after the violence reaches the classroom. UNESCO highlights that the theme comes amid a significant escalation in attacks on education. The strength of this year's theme lies in how it broadens the conversation, moving beyond the number of schools attacked to consider the wider consequences for societies when education itself becomes unsafe. When conflict enters the classroom, the consequences can endure long after the fighting ends. Schools provide education accompanied with routine, social connection and a sense of normality during instability. Their destruction or occupation subsequently results in communities losing one of the core structures that helps hold everyday life together. Existing inequalities can deepen, opportunities disappear and recovery becomes harder. The resilience of education is sustained by the communities determined to keep it alive, even when the structures around them are under threat.
Resilience, however, carries a cost. The persistence of education in conflict is a testament to community resistance and strength, while equally revealing how much responsibility has been pushed onto those already living through violence. Teachers may continue lessons in temporary spaces and limited resources, demonstrating remarkable determination to preserve access to education despite the violence around them. That determination deserves recognition, but it should never become an expectation. Consequently, celebrating resilience without questioning why it is necessary risks shifting responsibility onto communities instead of states and armed actors who are legally obliged to protect education.
Sudan illustrates the limits of this resilience. At Al Zahra Primary School in Central Darfur, conflict and displacement have pushed around 1,200 students into just seven classrooms, with some classes accommodating 160 and 210 pupils. By night, the same school becomes a shelter for displaced families. Its continued operation has become a striking example of resilience, yet this survival also exposes the costs, as education continues only by absorbing the pressures of conflict, displacement and severe resource shortages.
Survival is not the same as security, and resilience cannot substitute for protection. An education system that proceeds to operate under constant threat should not automatically be regarded as a success. Its survival may instead expose the failure of existing protection mechanisms and the inability of the international community to prevent these increasing attacks. Rather, this theme raises the uncomfortable but necessary question: How much should a child, a teacher or a community reasonably be expected to endure to keep education alive? The answer cannot be to demand greater resilience from those already facing conflict. It must be to create conditions in which such resilience is unnecessary.
When schools become battlegrounds
Education under attack is often imagined as a school reduced to rubble. In reality, the threat takes many forms. While bombings and shelling may provide the most visible evidence of violence, attacks also include the military occupation of educational facilities, abductions, threats against teachers and students, and actions that force schools to close. In 2024 and 2025, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack recorded 8,566 attacks on education, harming at least 10,600 students and teachers. More than 3,000 of these attacks were on the school itself, but thousands of other incidents disrupted education in less visible ways.
The consequences here extend beyond the immediate physical danger, as a school can remain standing and still become inaccessible. Military occupation can turn classrooms into places associated with danger, while threats against teachers or students can be enough to keep families away. Attacks on education transform spaces intended for protection and opportunity into places associated with fear and violence. Protecting education requires addressing every form of violence that makes learning unsafe or inaccessible.
A school day under fire
In February 2026, a school day in Minab, Iran, became a scene of devastating civilian loss. The Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school was struck during military operations, killing 156 people, 120 of which were school children. The attack exposed the most extreme consequence of education entering the battlefield. A space intended for learning and protection instead became a space of mass civilian harm. The incident has since prompted demands for accountability over whether sufficient precautions were taken to protect the school and those inside it.
The unequal cost of lost education: Who pays the price?
An attack may strike one school, but its consequences fall unevenly across the students inside it. Girls, displaced children, students with disabilities and those from marginalised ethnic communities often face greater barriers to returning once learning is disrupted. For girls in particular, prolonged exclusion from school can increase exposure to child marriage and gender-based violence, making temporary disruption potentially permanent.
For those already fighting for access, an attack can close a door that was barely open in the first place. In May 2026, a Government Girls Primary School in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, was reportedly destroyed by explosives. It marked the ninth reported attack on a school in the province since the beginning of the year, with attacks disrupting education for more than 1,000 students. Yet the consequences fall against an already unequal landscape, with an estimated 4.5 million children aged 5-16 out of school in this region, with girls making up the majority of the figure. Thus, the cost of an attack is greater where access to education was never equal to begin with.
Protection on paper, danger in practice
International humanitarian law provides clear protections for education during armed conflict. Schools are civilian objects and must be protected from attack unless they become military objectives, while parties to conflict must take constant care to spare civilians and civilian infrastructure. Yet the reality on the ground reveals a persistent gap between legal obligation and practice. Schools continue to be bombed, occupied and forced to close, placing students and teachers directly in harm's way. This gap between legal protection and lived reality is one of the central challenges facing education in conflict. The existence of legal protections is not enough. Without effective monitoring and accountability, these safeguards risk becoming little more than promises on paper while students continue to learn under threat.
UN Action to Protect Education from Attack
The United Nations has developed a range of mechanisms aimed at moving the protection of education from awareness towards prevention, monitoring and recovery. In April 2026, UNESCO’s Executive Board approved a Preventative Plan of Action to Protect Education from Attack, setting out measures to strengthen preparedness, maintain learning during crises, rehabilitate damaged facilities and build resilient education systems. UNESCO is also working to improve data collection to document attacks more accurately, identify patterns and support accountability.
Alongside this, the UN’s Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism records attacks on schools and hospitals as one of six grave violations against children in armed conflict. Information gathered through the mechanism feeds into the Secretary-General's annual Children and Armed Conflict report and can result in parties responsible for attacks being formally listed and required to develop action plans. These mechanisms matter when they translate international commitments into prevention, accountability and safer classrooms.
GICJ Position
Geneva International Centre for Justice (GICJ) strongly condemns attacks on schools and educational institutions as grave violations of human rights and calls for greater attention to be placed on those responsible for carrying them out, enabling or failing to prevent attacks, as opposed to placing the burden on affected communities. States and armed actors must be held accountable for attacks that endanger students, teachers and the right to education. GICJ further calls for effective measures to be put in place to support students whose education has been disrupted, ensuring that protection, recovery and continued access to learning remain central to post-conflict responses. Communities should not be expected to become endlessly resilient in the face of preventable violence. The goal must be to create conditions in which children can learn safely, without resilience substituting for protection.
