A School Should Never Be a Battlefield
Human Rights Watch reports a disturbing global trend: between 2024 and 2025, at least 8,500 attacks on education were documented across 83 countries, a rise of more than 40% from the previous two-year period. More than 10,600 students, teachers, and education personnel were harmed. Even more striking, 55 of those countries were not experiencing active armed conflict, suggesting that threats to education extend beyond conventional battlefields.
The crisis is particularly severe in places such as Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti, Colombia, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Gaza, nearly every school had been damaged or destroyed by the end of 2025, while Ukraine recorded more than 900 attacks on schools. At the same time, the military use of educational facilities nearly doubled, surpassing 1,900 cases globally.
These numbers reveal something deeper than physical destruction. Once a school becomes a military position, children face greater risks of recruitment, sexual violence, retaliatory attacks, and prolonged disruption of learning. A classroom designed to protect childhood can instead become part of the machinery of conflict.
This changes how we should think about protecting schools during war. Rebuilding classrooms after attacks is necessary, but prevention must come first. If education is truly a human right, schools cannot be treated as spaces we repair after violence, they must be boundaries that war is never allowed to cross.
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