Attacking education is barbaric assault on lives of students, teachers: Sheikha Moza

Her Highness spoke on the occasion of International Day to Protect Education from Attack

QNA

DOHA: HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of the Education Above All (EAA) Foundation and Sustainable Development Goals Advocate, stressed that attacking education is a barbaric assault on the lives of students and their teachers that leaves nothing but destruction, emptiness and darkness over their lives. She pointed out that those who target education are undoubtedly aware of what they are committing and intend it with premeditation.

“The future is annihilated, and there is no doubt that those who target education know what they are doing and do so with premeditation,” Her Highness said.

During her speech on the occasion of the International Day to Protect Education from Attack, which is held under the title ‘Education in Peril: The Human Cost of War’ in 2024, Her Highness said, “when I talk of education, my definition is not abstract, but comprehensive. Education is classrooms crowded with innocent children who dream. Education is the parents who dream of a bright future for their children. Education is the vessel that will carry those children to that bright future. Education is the dedicated teachers who guide the vessel and prepare the children to lead the way.”

During the ceremony that was held in Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC), Her Highness continued, “when I speak of premeditation, Gaza is the most urgent and important issue. Gaza is being subjected to brutal bombardment – a genocide marked by massacres that are taking place every day. One of the most atrocious was the massacre of more than a hundred displaced Palestinians, killed as they took shelter in Al-Tabi’een School in Al Daraj district.”

“If a similar massacre was committed by another country in Asia or Africa, the international community would have rushed, with no hesitation, to condemn and sanction it,” Her Highness emphasized.

HH Sheikha Moza bint Nasser pointed out that, “more than 10,000 students have been confirmed killed in Gaza since Oct. 7 last year, and at least 400 teachers, while 93 percent of schools have been destroyed. Many were occupied by displaced people rendered homeless by the conflict. Some had even been designed to double as emergency accommodation.”

In this context, Her Highness said that, “last April, 19 independent UN experts and rapporteurs gave an explicit warning of an intentional ‘scholasticide’ in the Gaza Strip. Recently, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has stated that Israel has been ‘genociding the Palestinians, one school at a time’ in the Gaza Strip. The failure of the international community to stop Israel’s atrocities has permitted this genocide, and the international community cannot continue to ignore Israel’s project to cleanse Palestine of the Palestinian people,” Her Highness continued.