New school year brings fresh fear for Myanmar children

29 May 2008: Hundreds of thousands of children in Myanmar whose lives have been devastated by Cyclone Nargis face new dangers when the new school year begins on 1 June, Plan, the leading international children’s NGO, warned today.

Only a handful of the 3,000 schools destroyed or severely damaged by the cyclone have been repaired, leaving 360,000 children in affected areas without a safe place to learn.

Unsafe school buildings, a shortage of teachers and lack of trained professionals to offer emotional support to those who were traumatised by the disaster, all put children returning to school at risk.

Plan has extensive experience of using schools and other safe spaces to help children recover from disasters, including the Tsunami, and the earthquakes in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Pakistan.

Safe places to learn

Tom Miller, Plan chief executive officer, is available for interview. He said: “Our experience has taught us that for children, returning to school is a vital part of the recovery process. If properly organised, schools can offer a strong foundation for the entire community’s recovery.

“But re-opening schools before they are ready can do children more harm than good. What should be safe spaces for children become unsafe spaces if pupils are rushed back into damaged buildings with staff who are ill-equipped to help. Unfamiliar schools, with unfamiliar faces can exacerbate problems, leading to greater anxiety and a sense of isolation among children.

“Plan has valuable experience and is ready and able to work with communities, local partners and the authorities in Myanmar to ensure children get back to school as quickly as possible with the right support and trained staff they need to rebuild their lives.”

In the aftermath of emergencies, a return to school can help children affected by tragedy and suffering to re-establish a daily routine. Schools offer children peer to peer support to talk about their experiences with their classmates, they are often in familiar surroundings, with familiar faces and they provide safe spaces for children to just “be children” again.

Schools also provide an ideal environment for trained counsellors to monitor and identify the early signs of long-term psychological problems in individual children and take early steps to intervene.

Children’s return to school also offers much needed benefits for the whole community: they allow adults to concentrate on rebuilding their homes, communities, lives, and livelihoods without having to worry about the children.

But rather than reaping the benefits of peer support, children who return to unsafe schools without trained staff risk physical injury and fresh trauma. Children living in displaced people camps are particularly at risk as they lack the support they would get from their own communities.

At least 135,000 people are dead or missing following the cyclone which struck Myanmar earlier this month, leaving many children orphaned and homeless. More than 2,500,000 people, about 1,500,000 of who are children, have been forced to flee their homes and an estimated 1,500,000 survivors of the cyclone have so far received no aid.

Note to editors

Plan works with more than 3,500,000 families each year throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. Plan is committed to working with local communities to strengthen children’s rights.

Contact: Gary Walker, director of communications
Tel: +44 (0) 1483 733321   Mobile: +44 (0) 7920 586467/+66 8 19841892
Email: gary.walker@plan-international.org  Web: www.plan-international.org/news/journalists/