Haiti’s education system will need to be rebuilt from the ground up, but it is a challenge which the new Director General of Unesco, Irina Bokova, and European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Kristalina Georgieva believe is the key to the country’s short and long-term recovery.

The two Bulgarian women met in Brussels on 17 February to discuss each institution’s possible solutions to the challenges which range from the destruction of thousands of school buildings, including all three of Port au Prince’s universities, a critical shortage of teachers and a pre-earthquake enrolment rate of around 50%. Both emphasised that coordination was essential to make an appropriate and tailored response to this complex array of problems, many of which are urgent and indeed will remain for decades.

The European Commission’s efforts on education will mainly, Georgieva explained, be included in its commitment to help reconstruct its government structures. «The European Commission has a strong interest in non-humanitarian relief and has committed 10 million euro for reconstructing the government,» she said. «Education is a high priority so we can give the kids and Haiti a future,” she added.

The Commission has already sent a team to Haiti to support government officials (including education officials) in Port au Prince who are attempting to return to work without many of their staff, in temporary buildings with little equipment and few records. The education ministry itself is now working from the Unesco offices, which withstood the earthquake.

But other efforts get to the heart of the fundamental challenges of rebuilding a system brought so brutally to its knees by the natural disaster. Outside assistance is essential, Bokova told Europolitics, because «the overall picture is of a state which has lost enormous human capacity to deal with the crisis itself».

Unesco is currently making an urgent appeal to French-speaking countries to send thousands of teachers to replace those killed in the earthquake and has launched a programme to start training new school staff. «There is an incredible necessity for teachers,» Bokova said.

NORMAL LIFE

Georgieva, who will visit Haiti before the end of February, said that «kids are those who more than anyone else can bring back normalcy and schools are a natural way,» she said. «School does not just help with their studies, but is a place to provide nutrition, to help kids grow with food in their bellies and to invest, through studies, in their future,» she added.

Unesco’s new technical and vocational training programmes aim to give Haitian adults the skills they need to get into work and to fuel the rehabilitation of the country themselves. This investment in education would also help long-term recovery, Bokova emphasised. «When there is investment in education, developing countries make huge breakthroughs,» she said. n