Broken Chalk Platform, in March 2019, was founded by a group of educators abroad who experienced and have been experiencing severe human rights violations in Turkey who had to ask for asylum currently in several countries.
These education volunteers, who also suffered greatly, started their new lives in their new countries where there are no human rights violations in which they gain respect just because they are considered as human beings in those countries. However, they left one part of their minds and hearts in their homeland. They assigned themselves a new duty and the human rights violations they left behind had to be announced to the whole World. A group of education volunteers who came together for this purpose started their activities under the Broken Chalk platform’s umbrella. However, the Broken Chalk platform was not enough to serve for their aims. Therefore, they completed their official establishment as a Human Rights Foundation in October 2020.
Actually, we can express the reasons for our journey with the following sentences.
Firstly, it is to make effectively known the increase of awareness of the human rights violations in Turkey by the World.
The current Government in Turkey had violated and spurned its own legally accepted written laws of the constitution.
As best as we can, we wish to announce to the world that in today’s Turkey,
- no one is equal in the eye of legislation,
- that presumption of innocence and crime privity were disregarded,
- that the people are not considered innocent until their crimes have been proved,
- that a usual act before is now counted as a definite crime, and so on.
We do wish to work hard to help make our beautiful land, Turkey, again a state of law and to give an end to all those unfair activities.
As for Broken Chalk, we imagine and look for a Turkey where mothers and their babies were not imprisoned, where people are not found in their prison-cell dead, and in where to help people in need is not considered as a crime and where being a member or a supporter of a legal party is not committed as an offend, etc.
Broken Chalk is now much more than a platform and we have reviewed and enlarged our vision and mission within this framework. Violations of rights would be the first in our agenda in the field of Education all over the World. At the point we reached today, Broken Chalk opened its door to all individuals from all across the globe, from all professions, and to all individuals who say or can say ‘I also want to stand against violations of human rights in Education for our future and whole humanity, where our generations grow up together.’
Covid-19 is the agenda of the whole World nowadays, but each year, an average of 297,000 children around the world die because of not having access to clean water.[1] The internet is the most essential need of our children to continue their Education during the pandemic period; however, all World states failed in this task. Worldwide, two-thirds of the school-age children aged 3-17, or 1.3 billion, do not have internet access in their homes.[2]
What makes Education so important is that it can help us eliminate the evils from society, introduce, and increase the good. We want to draw the attention of the public and stakeholders that Education is in danger in several different parts of the World. The attacks are wide-reaching from the bombing of schools to the murdering of students and teachers. Raping and sexual violence, arbitrary arrests, and forced recruitment also occurred, instigated by armed groups. Attacks on Education harm the students and teachers, but they also affect the communities both in the short and long term.
To mention a few of these from many,
- Nigeria: 611 Teachers were killed, 910 Schools Destroyed in Nine Years in Northeast[3]
- More than 22,000 students and teachers were harmed or killed in attacks on Education in the last five years.[4]
- America: Since 2009, at least 177 of America’s schools experienced shootings.[5] Attackers killed 110 students and teachers, 246 injured.[6]
- Between 2015 and 2019, 93 countries experienced at least one attack on Education, 19 more countries than in the previous reporting period of 2013-2017.[7]
- Yemen and the Democratic Republic of Congo were particularly badly hit, with 1,500 attacks on schools in each country, and Afghanistan, Palestine, and Syria all saw 500.[8]
- Ukraine: Since the conflict began in early 2014, more than 750 educational facilities on both sides of the contact line have been damaged or destroyed due to hostilities.[9]
- In Turkey: According to the data compiled by the Union of Education (Egitim-Sen), the Government dismissed 41,005 educators.[10] In addition to that, sixteen private universities, where more than 56,000 students were receiving High Education, were also closed down, and thus 5,342 people, including 2,465 academicians, lost their jobs.[11]
Children and young people are silent victims of global bureaucracies, whose creative statistics and evasive vocabulary disguise their failure to translate any of the promises made into reality.
Our seminar on January 24, International Day of Education, was realized in partnership with Learning Planet. In this context, one of our new goals is to enrich this day with more programs, activities, and events next year as an Education Festival.
We invite all individuals who want to stop human rights violations in Education to become Volunteers of Broken Chalk.
Ramazan İnce
Co-Founder President
Broken Chalk
[1] https://www.who.int/news/item/18-06-2019-1-in-3-people-globally-do-not-have-access-to-safe-drinking-water-unicef-who
[2] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/two-thirds-worlds-school-age-children-have-no-internet-access-home-new-unicef-itu
[3] https://allafrica.com/stories/202009090067.html
[4] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/22000-students-teachers-harmed-killed-attacks-education-last/
[5] https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/3dbf6b680fc84036a3503159a96d50f2
[6] https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/07/us/ten-years-of-school-shootings-trnd/
[7] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/22000-students-teachers-harmed-killed-attacks-education-last/
[8] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/22000-students-teachers-harmed-killed-attacks-education-last/
[9] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/attacks-schools-quadruple-conflict-hit-eastern-ukraine-unicef
[10] https://stockholmcf.org/turkish-teacher-not-assigned-over-his-alleged-links-to-gulen-movement-killed-in-workplace-accident/
[11] https://stockholmcf.org/turkey-celebrates-teachers-day-as-tens-of-thousands-of-dismissed-teachers-jobless-or-in-prisons/
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