Combating terrorism not only requires weapons but also an investment in education

Somalia and Haiti have topped a list of the world’s worst places to be a school child according to a new report from the Global Campaign for Education.  

The countries have been ranked according to factors including access to basic education; teacher: pupil ratio; and educational provision for girls. The bottom 10 countries are Somalia, Eritrea, Haiti, Comoros, Ethiopia, Chad, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Liberia.

In Somalia, for example, ongoing conflict and civil unrest have had a catastrophic effect on education with most recent data estimating that only 10 percent of children are enrolled in primary school.


In Nigeria, the sixth biggest oil producer in the world, a lack of political will is a major factor in the country having the highest number of children out of school in the world. Gross inequality in the provision of education has led to 8.2 million children out of primary school with many more dropping out within the first year. Over half of these children are in the north of the country. Girls suffer the most with many receiving just six months of education in their lives. The situation is made all the more appalling by the fact that Nigeria is far from poor, by African standards. On paper at least it is among the continent’s richest countries. But decades of failure to invest in education have left the basic school system hardly functioning. While there has been progress in primary provision of education, only one country in Africa has more than 50 percent of its children in secondary school.

The wealthy nations of this world by not trying to seriously reverse this unfortunate situation in the area of education are basically digging their own grave. Those increasing numbers of uneducated people in the world are an easy prey for religious fanatics and they will come and haunt the rest of us full force.

Combating terrorism not only requires weapons, but also an investment in education where it is needed most. That is really the only long term way of stopping the spread of terrorism.

EU-Digest 
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