HRW to Pakistan: Protect students, schools

ISLAMABAD (PAN needs to take immediate steps to protect schools, teachers, students and rights activists

Urging Taliban, al Qaeda and their affiliates to halt attacks on children, schools and educationists, HRW asked the Pakistan army to refrain from using schools as bases.

A statement from the organisation said 96 school attacks that took place in the country during the current year. The HRW country director said: “Parts of Pakistan are among the most dangerous places in the world to go to school today.”

Ali Dayan Hasan added: “It’s time Pakistani authorities understand that expressions of outrage alone are inadequate and such attacks will only end if they hold abusers accountable.”

About the Taliban assault on a schoolgirl in Swat, Hasan said the unity of global condemnation and the speed of response to Malala Yousafzai’s shooting were phenomenal.

“But we need to see the same kind of reaction every time a student or a school is attacked. The schools that have remained for years piles of rubble across Pakistan’s northwest bring into question the government’s level of commitment to seeing children return to school in safety.”

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