Since the US-led military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, foreign donors have invested heavily in education, building schools, supporting teacher training, and providing textbooks and other materials to schools across Afghanistan. But as the country’s security situation has deteriorated, schools throughout Afghanistan have been under threat, not only from resurgent Taliban forces but also from the very Afghan state security forces mandated to protect them.

Increasingly, the country’s security forces have been using schools—the only concrete-reinforced buildings in some villages—as their military bases during offensives against Taliban-held areas. Even if the buildings remain unscathed, military occupation interrupts children’s education. But all too often, the schools become battlegrounds as the Taliban counterattack government positions, leaving the buildings damaged or in ruins and denying children an education until they can be rebuilt, if ever.

This use of schools has placed schools at risk of attack and students and teachers in harm’s way. It is also contrary to the global Safe Schools Declaration, which Afghanistan endorsed in 2015. The declaration urges parties to armed conflicts “not to use schools and universities for any purpose in support of the military effort.”

Based on a research mission in April 2016, this report documents the occupation or other use for military purposes of 12 schools in one area of Baghlan province in north-eastern Afghanistan. Although conditions in Baghlan reflect the particular dynamics of the conflict in the northeast, where tensions between local security forces and government officials have erupted over military policy, security forces have used schools in other conflict-affected areas of the country as well, and statistics provided by the United Nations indicate that the problem is getting worse. The use of schools by Afghan security forces has severely harmed children’s right to education in Afghanistan, affecting tens of thousands of school children at all levels of education, and thousands of teachers and education administrators.

Report by the Human Rights Watch