There is an urgent need to better protect students, teachers, schools and universities from attacks in the armed conflicts that are escalating across the globe. This message was clear as Farida Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, launched her latest policy brief at an event on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council’s Social Forum, co-organised by the EiE Hub and the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) and co-sponsored by the Permanent Missions of Colombia, Norway, Portugal and Spain, on 30 October 2025.

The launch event, held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, opened with moving testimony from young people with first-hand experiences of seeing education disrupted by armed conflict: activists from Similar Ground spoke of their experience from the in Bidibidi refugee settlement in Northern Uganda; Pashtana Durrani, Executive Director of LEARN Afghanistan, highlighted the devastating impact of restrictions on girls’ education in Afghanistan; while Syedul Mustafa, Head of the Rohingya Youth Advocacy Network, stressed the extreme challenges Rohingya children face to access education, both in their home country of Myanmar and as refugees elsewhere.

H. E. Marcos Gómez Martínez, Ambassador of Spain to the UN in Geneva, used his opening remarks to stress the need for other states to follow his country’s example in endorsing the Safe Schools Declaration (SSD). He was followed by Nicolas Gerard from the office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, who pointed to the far-reaching impacts of mounting attacks on education in conflict: “Education is not just a human right, but a cornerstone of peace and security.”

Ms. Shaheed then presented key findings from her policy brief and eight urgent, actionable priorities for international and national actors to protect and realize the right to education in armed conflict. These include efforts to bring national legislation in line with international law on attacks on education, as well as strengthening accountability by criminalising such attacks. She also stressed the centrality of the rights of survivors to redress: “Education itself can be a form of reparation for victims, in particular for the youngest.”

Ilaria Paolazzi, Senior Advocacy and Policy Adviser at GCPEA, welcomed the broad view taken in the policy brief, and how this ties into other efforts to strengthen implementation of the SSD: “This brief is a milestone in standard setting. It rightly advocates for States to take a rights-based approach, as opposed to simply viewing attacks on education narrowly through a lens of international humanitarian law.”

Sandra Krähenmann, Head of Policy, Research and Legal unit at Geneva Call, stressed to need to also engage with non-state armed groups (NSAGs), in particular as the number of such groups has increased exponentially in recent years compared to the number of conflicts. For that purpose, Geneva Call has developed a Deed of Commitment on child protection and education, which has been signed by 31 groups since 2010. Esther Dingemans, Executive Director of the Global Survivors Fund, highlighted why providing reparations for child victims of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) can be so challenging, but also the healing potential of quality, flexible and trauma-informed education.

Petra Heusser, the EiE Hub’s Executive Director and moderator of the event, concluded by reaffirming the sheer scale of the issue: “By the end of 2024, one in six children – more than 473 million – lived in or were fleeing conflict zones. More than 85 million children in emergencies had no access to education whatsoever. Now, the challenge is to turn the momentum from this policy brief into real-world gains for children and youth.”

• Read the full policy brief Right to education in armed conflict: a human rights imperative