Impact of Global Armed Conflict on Education and Health of the Citizenry in the 21st Century

Abstract

The paper examined the impact of global armed conflict on Education and Health of individuals in the 21st century. It explores the effects communal armed conflicts on education and health of the citizenry. The impact of conflict on education as raised in the paper are that it disrupts school attendance, educational attainment, destroys educational infrastructures and schools as well as places of learning are often explicit targets of attacks. The paper further looked at the impact of armed conflict on the health of the victims to include challenges to productive health, fragmenting of family and community, increased sexual exploitation and rape including poor antenatal care. Others are potentials for spread of sexually transmitted infections, Including HIV/AIDS, increase dramatically during armed conflicts, the breakdown of health services, and blood transfusion services, to mention a few. Furthermore, several studies across nations revealed among others that states in civil wars experience a decline in enrollment by between 1.6 to 3.2 percentage points meaning a decline of 64,000 students for a country with a 4million enrolled population. In World War II a study of Cambodia by Merrouche (2006) revealed that exposure to land mines result in similar average of loss of 0.4 years of education. Based on these and many others it was recommended among other that as soon as refuge camps are established, children and youths be brought together and be exposed to educational programmes as well as attractive for attendance be given to those that participate fully in the programme.