VOA慢速英語(yǔ):Mali Conflict Keeps Children Out of School

[00:00.00]From VOA Learning English, [00:02.85]this is the Education Report in Special English. [00:07.23]Students and teachers are busy with the new school year [00:12.23]in Mali and throughout West Africa. [00:16.02]However, aid workers say most of the children [00:19.76]in northern Mali are unable to go to school. [00:24.30]Militants including some from the group al-Qaida [00:28.40]in the Islamic Maghreb took control of the north in April. [00:33.80]The Islamists are enforcing their own severe [00:37.94]form of Sharia law in the occupied territory. [00:43.09]The United Nations Security Council [00:46.39]is urging West African countries to speed up preparations [00:51.88]for a military intervention in northern Mali. [00:56.58]There are concerns that the conflict [00:59.63]might spread to other countries. [01:02.77]Large numbers of northerners have fled [01:06.66]to the government-held south or to neighboring countries. [01:12.16]Tom Mccormack is the Sahel director [01:14.75]for the aid group Save the Children USA. [01:18.95]He says there has not been enough information [01:22.80]from northern Mali to fully understand the situation. [01:27.39]"We're concerned that funds need to be made available [01:32.37]to assist children, particularly those [01:34.57]who have been displaced by the fighting, [01:36.11]have not been made available, [01:37.67]especially for education in this emergency response [01:41.12]that we and other actors on the ground here are trying to respond to." [01:45.43]Save the Children is part of the Education Cluster, [01:49.17]a group created by the U.N. to coordinate the emergency response in Mali. [01:56.98]The Education Cluster says the two hundred forty thousand students [02:02.22]remaining in the north have little to no access to education. [02:08.25]Cluster official Joa Keis says this increases the risk [02:14.14]of children being recruited as child soldiers. [02:18.59]"It's been shown that out-of-school children [02:20.25]are particularly vulnerable to falling into the hands [02:22.94]of armed groups given the situation in northern Mali. [02:26.50]With the presence of several armed groups controlling the area, [02:30.43]it is particularly important that we use education [02:34.13]as a means of protecting children from the potential [02:37.96]for ongoing use of child soldiers." [02:41.01]Human rights groups say the Islamists [02:44.30]are actively recruiting children as young as twelve years old. [02:48.98]The Education Cluster surveyed twenty five organizations in the north. [02:55.12]Three-fourths of them said local schools had been vandalized or destroyed. [03:02.47]Half reported that teachers had fled to the south. [03:07.27]And one-third said armed groups occupy schools. [03:12.91]Save the Children also says flooding has affected [03:17.51]an additional sixty thousand children across Mali. [03:22.32]Yet financial assistance for the country remains low. [03:27.68]Joa Keis says last year's humanitarian appeals process [03:33.49]met just four percent of the goal. [03:37.05]Teachers and local organizations say [03:41.40]they have kept some schools operating in the north [03:45.49]by negotiating compromises with armed groups. [03:50.48]Subjects like philosophy and biology are often not allowed. [03:56.34]Girls and boys must often be separated. [04:00.43]And some schools are only allowed to teach in Arabic, [04:05.87]a language that most of the students do not even speak. [04:11.03]And that's the Special English Education Report. [04:16.42]I'm Steve Ember.

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