Overview
There were approximately 6,000 attacks on education in 2022 and 2023, a 20 percent increase compared with the previous two years, according to the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) in their Education Under Attack 2024 report.
Over 10,000 students, teachers, and academics were harmed, injured, or killed in such attacks in armed conflicts, resulting in the need for medical care. Additionally, attacks on healthcare in armed conflict are also increasing thus those injured in attacks on education will be cared for in hospitals that may also be targeted, or where access to healthcare has been disrupted.
This CRASSH Healthcare in Conflict event, in collaboration with the Wolfson Global Health Hub, Cambridge Refugee Hub and Cambridge Global Challenges examines the urgent need to protect the education of students of all ages in current wars and the relationship with healthcare that results from such attacks.
In the documentary, Saving Syria’s Children (2013), reporter Ian Pannell follows doctors as they care for children gravely injured when a bomb was dropped on their school in Aleppo. At this event, the doctors, Drs’ Rola Hallam and Saleyha Ahsan and student Mohammed Assi injured in the incident will rejoin Ian Pannell and filmmaker Darren Conway OBE to discuss that tragic day when 28 children were injured and 10 were killed. Also, on the panel we will hear from Nataliia Popova from Kharkiv, and the plight of children seeking education during its current, ongoing war.
The panel, speakers and contributors
- Ian Pannell
Ian Pannell is the Chief Foreign Correspondent for ABC News. He has been in broadcast journalism for over thirty years. Prior to joining ABC, Ian worked at the BBC for twenty-seven years, covering some of the most important and compelling stories in recent world history. Ian reported from the frontlines of the Arab uprisings in Egypt, Bahrain and Libya, eventually covering the Syrian Revolution for three years as a civilian protest movement transformed into a civil war, making more than a dozen trips under the wire into rebel-held areas. He followed the war as it unleashed the 2015 refugee exodus into Europe.
His work in Syria and Europe over the years received three Emmy awards, a Royal Television Society gold, two Peabody awards, an International Press Award for his enterprise reporting on displaced families also in Syria as well as a first prize at the Prix Bayeux Calvados Award for War Correspondents for his reporting of an incendiary bomb attack on a school in Syria and a Marco Luchetta prize for his work on children affected by the war in Syria.
The RTS judges commended “outstanding courage in its eye-witness reporting from the front line but also great humanity in its portrayal of ordinary people caught up in the middle of a violent civil war”. Peabody cited his work in Syria as “without equal”. He also received an RTCA David Bloom Prize in America for “courage and excellence in enterprise reporting”.
Ian reported from the front lines of Crimea and Donbass in 2014/15 for the BBC and he has lead ABC’s coverage of Russia's War since 2022. He has also been a lead reporter in the coverage of the ongoing war in Gaza for which he also received an Emmy as part of the World News team.
- Darren Conway OBE
Darren Conway, or DC as he is widely known, is “the foremost television cameraman of his generation”, and has been documenting global events for two decades.
His work covering Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and more recently Syria has seen him receive the RTS award for best news cameraman six times and in 2014 he was awarded an OBE for services to British broadcast journalism.
DC was the cinematographer and director for the BBC Panorama Special Saving Syria’s Children and has continued to support and advocate on behalf of the students who were injured in the bomb attack that he caught on camera.
He has also worked extensively in Ukraine, covering its war and the plight of civilians as the try to survive.
- Nataliia Popova
Nataliia Popova is from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city and the first to be invaded by Russian forces after the start of the war. She got her family to safety and then stayed behind, helping to coordinate civilian evacuation and the influx of humanitarian relief. Together with World Central Kitchen she set up a distribution system for up to 20,000 meals a day to beleaguered citizens of the city.
Nataliia was involved in a special project manufacturing flak jackets and helmets for children who were being evacuated from frontline villages and towns under Russian bombardment. She has consistently worked with private companies and NGOs to raise funds and manufacture equipment.
Her knowledge and experience of the impact of the war on children is extensive and during this event will describe what happened to the education system in Kharkiv which was suspended for many months. Many schools were transferred underground, and set up in Metro stations, built to sustain a nuclear attack in the second world war, and in especially manufactured subterranean schools.
Working together with the mayor of Kharkiv and as an advisor to the deputy regional governor she rallied enough support and resources to make this happen. This last Christmas she organised a party for 400 kids displaced from the frontline.
- Mohammed Assi
Mohammed Assi suffered severe burns during the attack on a school in North Syria where he was a student in 2013. He is now currently pursuing an HND in Cyber Security at Abc Horizon Academy.
He holds a Diploma in Business Administration from People's University, USA. Despite his own sustained injuries, he has over 7 years of experience in humanitarian work in northwest Syria, with a focus on children and education. He is skilled in providing technical support for networks. Mohammed is passionate about the pursuit of knowledge and education particularly in the area of cyber security.
- Dr Rola Hallam
With over 18 years in anaesthesia and global health, Rola has dedicated her life to serving on the frontlines in the UK, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Syria. She has helped build seven hospitals in Syria, including the world’s first crowdfunded hospital through founding her organisation CanDo. Altogether, she's touched the lives of over 4 million people.
Her contributions have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Pask Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award and she is the first Syrian TED Fellow. As an advocate for the protection of healthcare, healthcare workers and civilians in conflict, she's shared global stages with presidents, celebrities and grassroots activists. Her work has been featured in major media outlets from the New York Times to The Daily Show, including two BBC documentaries.Rola's passion and mission lies in empowering heart-centred leaders, healers and warriors to lead purpose-driven lives and to be the healing presence our world needs. Through coaching, workshops, and her recent TEDx talk, "From Clever to Wise: How Healing Our Traumas Heals the World," she guides individuals and communities toward resilience, compassionate and impactful social change.
- Professor Pauline Rose
Pauline Rose is Professor of International Education at the University of Cambridge, where she is Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre in the Faculty of Education. She also co-directs the Cambridge Global Challenges Interdisciplinary Research Centre. Prior to joining Cambridge, Professor Rose was Director of UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report. Throughout her career, she has collaborated on large research programmes with teams in sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia examining issues related to tackling injustices in and through education. In 2022, Professor Rose was awarded an OBE for her services to girls’ education internationally.
- Dr Eolene Boyd-MacMillan
Dr Eolene Boyd-MacMillan, PhD, is a social psychologist working within the framework of public mental health promotion to develop and test community-based interventions that increase self-regulation, resilience and social cohesion and reduce destructive social polarisation and inequalities. She is Senior Research Associate and Co-Director of IC Research, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge. A member of Cambridge Public Health, her research includes populations living with legacies associated with historic migration events alongside opportunities and challenges linked to current migration and displacement due to political, economic and environmental crises. She is honoured to be the Convenor of the Myanmar Desk, Refugee Hub, Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement, Directed by Dr Tugba Basaran.
- Chair: Dr Saleyha Ahsan
Co-founder and convenor of CRASSH Healthcare in Conflict research network and current PhD student examining the impact of attacks against healthcare in armed conflict (International Health Systems Group, Department of Engineering). Saleyha is a broadcast journalist and filmmaker of 20 years experience, and has reported from Palestine, Syria, Kashmir and Libya specifically on the plight of civilians caught in the crossfire and on access to healthcare in war, for which she recieved an honorary degree from the University of Dundee, where she studied medicine.
Details
This event is open to all and free to attend - please book your place.
Access
This event will take place in the Gatsby Room on the first floor of the Chancellor's Centre. It has step-free access with a lift and there is an accessible toilet located each floor of the building.
Image copyright: Darren Conway OBE