By IPS Correspondents
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 15 2005 (IPS)

Enrolling children in school is one thing, but ensuring that they stay in class is a challenge that is being failed by nearly half of the world’s countries.

According to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released this week, as some 170 heads of state and government gather at the United Nations, children in developing countries around the world are likely to be shortchanged due to persistent barriers in accessing education.

Worldwide, an estimated 100 million children are not attending school, 60 percent of them girls. Nearly half of the world’s countries will fail to meet the agreed target of universal primary education by 2015 unless world leaders take immediate action, HRW says.

Titled “Failing our Children, Barriers to the Right to Education”, the HRW report details how school fees and related costs, HIV/AIDS, child labour, discrimination and lack of access, conflict and violence were undermining progress towards achieving universal primary education.

The three-day U.N. Summit, which ends Friday, was called to reaffirm past commitments on development, especially poverty reduction, in addition to endorsing the reshaping of the world body.

The outcome document of the Summit reaffirms the world leaders’ commitment to support developing country efforts to ensure that all children have access to free and compulsory primary education of good quality, to eliminate gender inequalities and to renew efforts to improve girls’ education.

The Millennium Development Goals Report 2005 states that education, especially for girls, has social and economic benefits for society as a whole that are key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Educated women have more economic opportunities and engage more fully in public life, and as mothers, they tend to have fewer and healthier children who are themselves more likely to attend school.

Children affected by HIV/AIDS may be denied access to school or mistreated by teachers, the report says. An Indian girl who was HIV-positive and had lost both parents to AIDS told HRW: “I sat separately from the other children, in the last mat. I sat alone. The other children wanted to be with me, but the teacher would tell them not to play with me.” Not surprisingly, the report says, the girl stopped going to school at age 10.

Prof. Elizabeth Ngugi of the University of Nairobi’s Department of Community Health, who is attending the Summit, sees the realities described in the report every day of her life.

“When one or both parents are HIV-positive and progressively ailing, it is the daughter who takes up home care without support or experience,” she said. “This signals the end of school for her and should her parents die, she can never go back to school.”

Ngugi explains that child heads of family are an increasingly common phenomenon in Kenya, and many female children end up in sex work to support themselves, their parents and siblings.

“Children do not have the capacity to sustain themselves adequately,” she says, “If we do not pay attention to what HIV/AIDS and poverty are doing to children, we shall not achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the given time frame.”

The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in poverty and hunger; universal primary education; reduction of child mortality by two-thirds; cutbacks in maternal mortality by three-quarters; the promotion of gender equality; and the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

In the last two years, since the Kenyan government announced a free universal education policy, primary school enrolment has increased exponentially. However, it has created new challenges, including overcrowded, overstretched facilities, and a high pupil to teacher ratio. This is despite the fact that 28 percent of Kenya’s annual budget – some three billion dollars – is spent on education.

The education crisis in sub-Saharan Africa is deepened by the impact of HIV/AIDS. According to the MDG report, in 1999 alone, nearly one million children lost their teachers to AIDS. This places an unsustainable burden on many countries that already lacked adequately trained teachers.

The situation in southern Sudan, Kenya’s northwestern neighbour, is especially discouraging. Emerging from 21 years of conflict, the country has several generations of children and young people who have never attended school.

Speaking in Nairobi ahead of the Summit, the newly elected chair of the National Women’s Association for Southern Sudan, Mama Mary Abiong’, said education was a priority in the new Sudan, but in order to be effective, it must target formal, informal and adult education to address the needs of the various generations deprived in the war years.

Mama Abiong’ was also concerned that the pace of allocating resources is too slow. “We are also aware that we cannot do anything yet as long as we are empty-handed,” she said.

HRW urges governments to ensure that children are not denied their right to education because of school fees and the costs associated with education and that they enact and enforce bans prohibiting discrimination in education against children.

The report also recommends that governments address the relationship between education and child labour by providing incentives to keep children in school. This includes expanding educational opportunities for working children and making stronger efforts to remove children from the worst forms of child labour.

*This story was produced for the TerraViva Millennium Development Goals Journal.

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