Shaikha Mouza Bint Nasser Al Misned, the first lady of Qatar, will play a leading role in a new United Nations “Education First” initiative designed to bring education to the 61 million children around the world who are not in school, especially the nearly half living in conflict areas. Shaikha Mouza Bint Nasser Al Misned, a special envoy for UNESCO, said she wants especially to draw global attention to an often-forgotten consequence of war: the 28 million children in conflict zones deprived of education. “The majority of them are living in our region–Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Palestine,” said Shaikha Mouza, “So this is the scale of the crisis.”
As a start, Shaikha Mouza is launching the first handbook summarizing international laws that protect education during armed conflict. The guide, Protection of Education in Insecurity and Armed Conflict, covers international human rights, humanitarian, and criminal law. She said it’s a tool for lawyers, prosecutors, judges, victims, and laymen “to ensure that those who violated the laws related to protection of education can be brought to justice.” Shaikha Mouza said she hopes it will also become “a preventive tool.”