VIEWPOINT: Children's safety should start at school

Secondary school students use specially made blankets to protect their heads during an earthquake drill in Baclaran Municipal high school, suburban Manila, Philippines, December 2006. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco

On the International Day for Disaster Reduction, Salvano Briceno, director of the U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) secretariat, challenges the world&${esc.hash}39;s education authorities to make schools safer places.

Our most precious investments are little things - easily damaged, always in need of protection, but of limitless potential value. So why do we risk the most important capital of all: our children&${esc.hash}39;s lives?

October 10 is the International Day for Disaster Reduction. It&${esc.hash}39;s an appropriate moment to ask a vital question: why do we put children&${esc.hash}39;s lives at risk in the places we should expect to be the safest - their schools?

In the last few years, tens of thousands of children have perished because their schools did not protect them. They died in earthquakes, floods, windstorms, mudslides and wildfires. They died because their schools were not built properly; not on the right kind of land or high enough above flood plains; not designed to survive the most likely natural hazard.

The fragile bodies recovered from the wreckage of fallen schools represent not just a human tragedy, but evidence of thoughtlessness or needless ignorance in the communities around them.

So the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the U.N. International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) have, for the last two years, led a worldwide effort to make schools safer and turn them into places for education about safety, resilience and risk reduction.

What could make more sense? First, we need to protect children during the hours they spend together each day. Then we must teach them how to think ahead, how to react when danger threatens - what to do when the ground begins to shake, where to run when the river bursts its banks, where to take shelter during a hurricane or typhoon, and how to develop a culture of prevention.

And because lessons learned at school are taken home, education continues. Parents - struggling to make ends meet, to ensure security, to provide for their children&${esc.hash}39;s education and future - begin to understand that awareness of natural hazards is itself an investment in the future. It helps protect families against natural dangers, and reduces the risks of future disaster.

If parents become interested in safety at school, then the pressure starts to build on elected politicians and local civic authorities to take steps to make all schools safer places. Children become aware of ways to protect themselves when the skies darken or the ground begins to tremble.

DISASTER AWARENESS SPREADS

That, at least, is the principle. So far, 55 countries have enrolled in the United Nations&${esc.hash}39; two-year campaign to take disaster reduction directly to the classroom. More than 20 countries report "highly visible" successes in pioneering initiatives to bring disaster awareness to schools, both by using local knowledge to make buildings safer, and by taking the subject itself into the classroom.

For instance, an earthquake safety programme in Iran that began in one school as an experiment eight years ago, last year involved 14 million students and 130,000 schools. In India, 100,000 students, 2,500 teachers and 200 schools are covered by disaster management plans.

Lessons in disaster reduction are being conducted in Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cape Verde, the Republic of Congo and 10 other African countries. And there will be lessons to mark the International Day for Disaster Reduction in at least 18 nations in the Americas.

All these things sound encouraging, but there&${esc.hash}39;s a long way to go.

Nowhere in the world is completely safe: children died and schools were destroyed by Hurricane Felix in the Gulf of Mexico in September; children were at risk during Peru&${esc.hash}39;s earthquake in June; and communities were threatened in Greece in August by uncontrollable forest fires.

More than 50 countries have now launched school safety programmes. But we should remember that, in the year following the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunami of December 26, 2004, 168 countries agreed the Hyogo Framework to build disaster risk reduction and a culture of prevention into their communities at every level.

Where better to start than with schools?

The benefits could be huge. At the most basic level, making schools stronger will save young lives. Steps to teach children safety drills will serve as a type of invisible life insurance, not just at school but at home. And simple lessons in the realities of earthquakes, windstorms, floods and fires will also provide the beginnings of instruction in the wider fields of geography, economics, environmental science, physics and engineering.

Disaster awareness need not be a very expensive lesson, but whatever it costs, the price is nothing when set against the loss of a school full of children, buried alive in a mudslide or crushed by falling masonry. We all still have a lot to learn.

To mark the 2007 International Day for Disaster Reduction, ISDR is launching a new publication showing how children can be better educated to face disasters, "Towards a Culture of Prevention: Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School". It is also releasing the online video game "Stop Disasters" in new languages (French, Spanish, Chinese and Russian), and holding a roundtable discussion in Geneva. For more information, visit the ISDR website.

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