Hijacked Education

"Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world." Nelson Mandela, but violence is wiping out years of investment and achievements in education. War has a catastrophic effect on education and childhood. Death as a result of war is simply the "tip of the iceberg." There are schools destroyed and abandoned. Those are the altars without the shape of the lost learning. There are teachers and students in exile; kids are soldiers; and education is kidnapped and raped. There are books burned, photographs on the ground, and identities lost and stolen. There are empty classrooms, desks stacked and piled up, covered with the void of ignorance. The war is not finished with the last bullet, the empty bullet shell, or when the flag is raised. Conflicts leave deep scars on the psyche of children, highlighting the importance of education in the hope of creating a future that could break the cycle of war. Currently, some 264 million children worldwide do not have the opportunity to enter or complete school due to poverty, discrimination, armed conflict, emergencies, and the effects of climate change. Hijacked education was started in Pakistan in 2012. It has been produced in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Colombia, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Argel, and Nagorno-Karabakh. The aim of it is to generate a personal and universal statement to show how violence, extremism, intolerance, and fear are wiping out the future of an entire generation of thousands of children.