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'A Global Crisis': Report Reveals Over 40% Rise in Violent Attacks on Education
The coalition leader behind the report called the figures "a warning that the global norms that once protected children are collapsing," and "the world is drifting toward a place where even the youngest are no longer off‑limits.”
Jun 15, 2026
From the Gaza Strip to Ukraine and beyond, violent attacks on students, teachers, and schools have surged in recent years, according to a report released Monday by an international coalition.
The report, titled "Education Under Attack 2026," documents at least 8,566 attacks on education and cases of military forces using educational facilities from the beginning of 2024 to the end of last year, a more than 40% increase from the previous two-year period.
"We believe the true increase is far higher," noted Felicity Pearce, lead researcher for the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) report, in a statement. "Escalating conflict, shrinking humanitarian access, and widespread information blackouts mean many attacks are never reported."
The 2024-25 attacks harmed at least 10,600 students, educators, and other personnel across 83 countries, including 55 that are not in active conflict. GCPEA found the highest incidence in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Haiti, Palestine, and Ukraine, while Cameroon, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Yemen had the greatest numbers of people harmed or killed.
"Cameroon continued to face overlapping security crises, which continued to heavily affect civilians in 2024-2025, marked by persistent violence in the Far North region and protracted armed conflict in the Northwest and Southwest regions," the report explains. GCPEA recorded at least 67 attacks on schools, 85 attacks on students and staff, and 11 reports of military use of educational facilities.
It's now been a decade since the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia signed peace accords, but GCPEA still identified at least 160 reports of attacks on educational facilities, 129 reports of attacks on students and personnel, and 107 reports of military use of schools.
In the DRC, as "armed conflict intensified" between the Rwandan Defense Force-backed March 23 Movement and the Congolese national armed forces—supported by Burundi's military and allied militias—there were at least 350 attacks on schools, 15 attacks on students and staff, and 313 cases of military use of facilities.
"Conflict in Ethiopia continued to impact access to education for millions of children," the publication states. GCPEA tracked around 100 attacks on schools and seven on students and personnel—though acknowledged monitoring and reporting challenges—as well as approximately 1,200 schools used for military purposes, a sharp increase from the previous period.
"As armed gangs in Haiti merged and gained control over more of the country, escalating violence included attacks on schools, school students, and staff, as well as the military use of schools, and disrupted education for over 1.2 million children," according to the report. Specifically, there were at least 339 attacks on schools, 55 attacks on students and staff, and 27 reports of military use of facilities.
In Myanmar, "as internal conflict intensified between the military junta that seized power in February 2021 and armed resistance groups," GCPEA tracked 212 attacks on schools, 18 attacks on students and personnel, and 84 military occupations.
As armed conflict between the Nigerian government and non-state armed groups continued during the reporting period, attacks on schools dropped slightly, to nine, while attacks on students and staff were consistent, at 14—but at least 90 people were killed or injured, and over 700 were abducted. There were at least five incidents of the military using schools.
"Israel continued to commit genocidal violence against the Palestinian population in Gaza," the report says, and there were increased attacks on schools, students, and teachers in both the coastal strip—where most educational buildings have been "severely damaged"—and the occupied West Bank. Across Palestine, GCPEA identified at least 620 attacks on schools, 2,400 attacks on students and staff, and 10 cases of the military use of educational facilities.
As Ukrainian forces continued to fight Russian invaders, GCPEA tracked more than 900 attacks on schools and at least one case of military use of a school. The report also points out that "1,611 schools had been damaged or destroyed since the start of the full-scale invasion, including at least 339 that had been completely destroyed," forcing 741,000 children to study in a hybrid format, and another 443,000 to learn entirely online.
In Yemen, "a fragile truce largely held through 2024 and 2025," but the continued battle among the internationally recognized government, Houthi forces, and regional actors meant there were still at least 16 attacks on schools, 62 attacks on students and staff, and 63 cases of military use of facilities.
Lisa Chung Bender, director of the GCPEA, told The Guardian that the report's findings "are a warning that the global norms that once protected children are collapsing."
"A warning that the world is drifting toward a place where even the youngest are no longer off‑limits," she said. "And a warning that if we do not hold the line now, we may never get it back."
The report urges support for the Safe Schools Declaration, and features recommendations for governments and civil society.
Its release follows the latest publication from the Explosive Weapons Monitor, which was released last week and documents at least 22,616 civilian fatalities from explosive weapons across 65 countries and territories last year. The monitor found 1,416 attacks on education in 2025, a 64% increase from 2024, and also highlighted Myanmar, Palestine, and Ukraine.
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'MAGA's Weird Obsession' Continues as House Passes Bill Forcing Schools to 'Out' Trans Kids
One Democratic lawmaker said the legislation "puts trans youth in harm's way and censors content that acknowledges trans people’s existence."
May 20, 2026
The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation that critics warn would force public schools receiving federal funding to "out" transgender students to their parents without or without their consent, a policy that advocates warn could endanger many trans youth.
HR 2616, the Stopping Indoctrination and Protecting Kids Act—but dubbed the "Don't Say Trans" bill by some critics—was introduced by Reps. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) and Burgess Owens (R-Utah) and passed by a vote of 217-198, with eight Democrats joining every Republican and one Independent present in voting for the legislation.
The bill—which faces an uncertain future in the Senate—requires federally funded elementary and middle schools to obtain parental consent before changing a student's gender markers, pronouns, or preferred names on school forms. It also mandates parental consent for a student's access to sex-based accommodations, such as locker rooms or bathrooms.
The legislation also prohibits federal elementary and secondary education funds from being used to advance concepts of so-called "gender ideology"—an inaccurate term that GLAAD says is "deployed by opponents to undermine and dehumanize transgender and nonbinary people"—in the classroom. The term features prominently in a day-one executive order signed by President Donald Trump in what critics say is an effort to effectively erase trans people from public existence.
"Too many schools are keeping parents in the dark about what’s happening in their own children’s classrooms, even going so far as to withhold critical information about their kids’ well-being and development," Walberg said.
"Families deserve honesty, not secrecy—especially when it comes to issues like gender identity," he continued. "Simply put, parents should never be the last to know—that’s not political, it’s common sense."
"Meanwhile, political and ideological agendas are being pushed through curriculum without parents’ knowledge or consent, sidelining the very people responsible for raising these children," Walberg added.
However, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—whose daughter is transgender—accused Republicans of "targeting trans kids with a bill that would require public schools to forcibly out students who want to use certain pronouns or accommodations, even if it would put them in danger."
"I'm a hell no," Jayapal said of the bill. "Trans kids deserve better."
Other House Democrats echoed Japayal's objections, with Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois warning that the "Republicans’ extreme bill puts trans youth in harm's way and censors content that acknowledges trans people’s existence."
"I will always stand up for student safety, and I am voting NO," Kelly added.
Rep. Christian Menefee of Texas said that "instead of making sure America’s schools have the resources and support they need to ensure every student is given the same shot at success, Republicans are bringing a 'Don't Say Trans' bill to the floor today to forcibly out trans students, even if doing so would put students in immediate physical danger."
"Parents across the country want their children to learn in safe, affirming environments, without worrying about their kids being outed for their gender identity," he added. "I won’t vote to put those kids in danger."
Rep. Laura Friedman of California lamented: "This week, congressional Republicans could have spent their time working with us to help Americans afford groceries and pay their rent. Instead, they spent their time advancing a bill meant to demean trans youth."
"I voted no and urge them to focus on the real needs of Americans," Friedman added.
The eight Democrats who voted for the bill are: Reps. Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar of Texas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Cleo Fields of Louisiana, Laura Gillen of New York, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, and Eugene Vindman of Virginia.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) called HR 2616 part of "MAGA’s weird obsession with trans people."
"When the going gets tough for Republicans in Congress—when they have no answers to soaring gas prices from Trump’s illegal war with Iran, rampant corruption, or spiking health premiums—they can’t help but fall back on their favorite strategy: fearmongering," HRC's Jennifer Pike Bailey wrote on Tuesday. "And unfortunately, the transgender community is still the scapegoat du jour."
"Policies that denigrate trans youth don’t succeed in erasing these students, they just make their lives immeasurably harder," she continued. "It’s the job of schools to keep youth safe. And as we’ve seen, LGBTQ+ students are in physical danger when harmful policies are implemented. Recent FBI data shows that in states that have passed these types of laws, anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes in schools have quadrupled."
"Opponents of LGBTQ+ equality are creating a lot of noise, and the only way to stop them is to be louder," Pike Bailey stressed. "We need phone calls, emails, letters to every member of Congress telling them to stop these attacks. And then we need to show up at the ballot box."
BREAKING: The House of Representatives just voted to require teachers to forcibly out transgender youth against their will.Censoring "gender ideology" does nothing to advance the basic promise that every child deserves the same opportunity to thrive, and that includes transgender students.
— ACLU (@aclu.org) May 20, 2026 at 2:32 PM
Tyler Hack, executive director of the trans political advocacy group Christopher Street Project, said in a statement that “HR 2616 is yet another escalation in Republicans’ sick obsession with criminalizing queer people and trans youth."
"This ‘Don’t Say Trans’ bill does not protect kids—it is government-mandated forced outing," Hack added. "Mandating that teachers act as agents of the state and out their own students is not protection; it’s cruelty."
According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, "an independent research organization tracking bills that impact trans and gender-diverse people across the United States," there are currently 778 state-level and 126 national bills under consideration "that would negatively impact" targeted people.
One of the most recently approved bills, signed into law Friday by Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, forces trans and nonbinary students who need to use public school restrooms to go outside to porta-potties. LGBTQ Nation's Greg Owen slammed the law as a "latter-day 'separate but equal' attack on trans rights."
The Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE) said that “this bill will do nothing to make our schools safer."
"Rather," CSE added, "it will make using the bathroom a difficult and even dangerous experience for trans and nonbinary youth, who are extremely likely to be bullied and harassed when using the bathroom."
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Can We Build a Country That Chooses Butter Over Guns?
How do we stop this war? How do we redirect the money being wasted into the schools and health centers, bike lanes and sustainable-energy infrastructures that we all so desperately need?
May 16, 2026
Guns or butter. Butter or guns. Can we have both? If not, which should come first? Consider it one of those chicken-and-egg conundrums of modern society.
“Guns” is the stand-in for a well-funded military and “butter” for all the human goods, comforts, and needs of a society.
Economists, politicians, and generals have long considered the balance of guns and butter. Wage too many wars, produce too many arms, and there won’t be enough money to keep a nation decently fed and comfortable. Produce too many consumer goods, meet everyone’s needs, and a nation might find itself ill-prepared and vulnerable in the face of a possible attack or even invasion. Everyone from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has had something to say about the balance of guns and butter (or, more likely, the lack of it).
No surprise, but I like butter and don’t like guns. I have long been attracted to the graphics produced by groups like the National Priorities Project (NPP) and Brown University’s Costs of War Project that dramatize the opportunity costs of war investment in the United States. At some point, one of those groups created a pen that had a long scroll on a pull-out flap inside it. At parties, as you were discussing the military budget, you could take out that pen and unfurl a long bar graph comparing US military spending to the budgets for education, healthcare, and infrastructure. Neat trick, right?
Every war is bad, stupid, and represents a colossal failure of the imagination, but this one, with the Trump trademark on it, should be considered the ur-war to oppose, resist, and refuse to pay for.
These days, NPP has a new factsheet that offers a breakdown of how the cost (so far) of President Donald Trump’s Iran “escapade” could have been so much better spent:
- Covering Medicaid for all 14 million people at risk of losing their insurance,
- AND the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, for all 4 million people at risk of losing food assistance, including 3.5 million due to new work requirements for older people and caregivers,
- AND expanding Medicaid to an additional 10.3 million people.
Those numbers are based on the Pentagon’s request for $200 billion in supplemental funding for the Iran war effort. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was on Capitol Hill on April 30, supporting a lowball estimate of the war costs as a mere $25 billion (and worth every dollar!) and asking for support for an inconceivable $1.5 trillion for Trump’s war machine in fiscal year 2027. Guns vs. Butter? More like guns force-fed foie gras and caviar and sautéed in the world’s most expensive butter.
Every Warship Launched, Every Rocket Fired
If I ever got a tattoo, it would probably be of this line from President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 “Chance for Peace” speech: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Eisenhower gave that speech 73 years ago (even as military budgets increased significantly while he was president) and yet the words ring truer than ever today. In reality, I’m unlikely to get a first tattoo at the age of 52, but I did see all of this up close and personal a couple of weeks ago at my Connecticut town’s school board meeting.
For months, school board members had been ringing an alarm bell about their budget. After years of scrimping and shaving, layoffs and early retirement packages, they were no longer able to economize their way to a balanced budget, and so were considering a “nuclear option”: closing one of our local schools.
Community members rallied, testified, and harangued. Busloads of kids joined our superintendent at the state capitol to ask for more support for our schools. For the last two months, everyone in my neighborhood has been talking about this, and on a Monday night a few weeks ago, the school board held a public meeting to make an ultimate decision about what to do.
I drove there over streets riddled with potholes, past new luxury apartments built as “workforce housing” for the engineers at General Dynamics Electric Boat, where a new class of nuclear submarines (12 boats for $132 billion) is now being designed. Those $2,200-a-month studio apartments overlook a gas station, train tracks, and a low block of struggling businesses in a flood zone.
A Theft from Those Who Hunger
The school budget gap (more than $7 million) is there for all the usual reasons, made more extreme because we’re living through what, in the age of President Donald J. Trump, can only be considered the cratering of imperial America globally and the volume is up to 11 on everything. In these years, the line items for staff health insurance, building utilities, and a host of other costs have skyrocketed. The contributions from the state of Connecticut aren’t even close to keeping pace. The whole enterprise is built on the backs of local property owners, and our taxes are already far too high.
The place most likely to be shuttered was CB Jennings School, right up the road from my house, which has (for the rest of this school year, anyway) 338 students. All but 30 of those students qualify for free or reduced-fare lunches, meaning they come from low-income households. The school population includes 149 “multi-language learners” and 66 special-education students.
The 338 kids there would be divided between the other two elementary schools in our neighborhood. The fifth graders would all go to the local middle school (which itself was to be consolidated from two buildings into one) and the eighth graders to the local high school.
Teachers and custodians, principals and paraprofessional educators, social workers and secretaries will all be moved around, too. Routines will be broken, friendships and collegial collaborations disrupted, teaching teams split up. There will be a great jostling for parking spaces, offices with windows, and classrooms that face out of (or into) the sun. September will be stressful indeed and no one is happy.
Who bears the brunt of all this disorder? The answer: the kids who pay no taxes and make no policies. The little ones who are already deemed behind when they show up for kindergarten and need all the help the professionals there can give them. The tween ones who just want to see their friends, show off their new braids, learn to play the trumpet, and get first place in the spelling bee. The older ones who need the breakfast, lunch, and snacks that are served at school. The ones who bring the light and the joy of learning with them every day.
The lives of those little ones and their slightly bigger siblings are all soon going to be subjected to massive disruptions.
A Theft from Those Who Are Cold
Of course, those “massive disruptions” are only so in relative terms. They’re but a minor hiccup compared to what’s happening in the lives of children throughout Iran during President Trump’s war on their country.
I cry about the war against Iran every day. (Truly!) The terror and the horror buzz through my head at the weirdest times: as I run errands, work in my garden, perform my school-crossing guard duties, and greet my young walkers. All this daily predictability and precious stability, the gorgeous ho-hum of the daily grind that has been stolen from the people of Iran by our war.
I look at pictures of Iranians cleaning up around buildings reduced to rubble and trying to go about their lives amid the catastrophe and I’m filled with awe. How would I ever begin again after surviving a rocket attack? Would I be able to extract the broom from the wreckage or ever brew tea again?
I tried to put such images aside when I went into the school board meeting that fateful night. When it was my turn to speak, I had three points to make—one minor, one secondhand, and one massive. I was nervous. My first point was easy. I argued that the school at the edge of the city should close instead of Jennings, which is more centrally located. My second point was awkward. My 12-year-old had written a speech, but then refused to read it and was whispering contradictory instructions to me as I got up for my turn to speak.
Finally, I got to my third point. Facing a semicircle of board members, I tried to channel the gravitas of President Eisenhower by pointing out that the Trump White House began its war against Iran by hitting a primary school with a Tomahawk cruise missile and killing 165 civilians, most of them schoolgirls. And I pointed out that decisions like the one to start a war with Iran ripple all the way to our coastline—destabilizing our local world and stealing from our kids, too. Closing an elementary school or having a massive budget hole are not our only two options, I said. We could instead be living in a society that prioritizes keeping elementary schools open and fully funded instead of bombing schools 6,700 miles away.
I tried not to think about the room full of parents and teachers behind me, but I still felt uncomfortably out on a limb making my geopolitical points during our local school board meeting. Despite my doubts, however, I continued, noting that between February 28—when my country started that terrible, illegal war—and March 27, the United States had fired 850 Tomahawk missiles at targets in Iran. And mind you, each one of those missiles comes at a cost to taxpayers of more than $3 million.
My three minutes of time were running out, so I rushed through the next part, mentioning that our senator, Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), estimated at the beginning of April that Trump’s war is now costing US taxpayers $1 billion dollars a day! And that’s before we factor in the long-term economic consequences of oil and gas price rises, disruptions to the global supply chain, and the cratering of my country’s already teetering standing globally.
I finished up by saying that we all have to work so much harder to stop this war as well as fund our schools and that the two were connected. This budget gap would be a difficult dilemma under the best of circumstances, but against the backdrop of war and calamity, it feels indicative of a much deeper problem than a few-million-dollar local budget holes. As I concluded. I made eye contact with the school board members and thanked them for their time.
Making my way back to my seat, I noticed that I was a little sweaty and that my hands were trembling. Why was I so nervous? Why was that so hard?
The Hopes of Its Children
Eisenhower’s speech is a rhetorical master class, well worth revisiting in this age of imperial fiat by tweet. Ike went on to intone:
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities…. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
After some formalities and hearing from a handful more people, the school board voted to shutter the CB Jennings Elementary School, a remarkably modern school in the heart of our city with a new playground and a beautiful library. The vote was unanimous. The board members were sad but resigned. It was treated as an inevitable but unfortunate outcome or even as a forward-looking, resolute action. They were “doing something” in the face of a huge budget gap.
And indeed, the school budget will be back in the black—for now—once a $1.4 million shortfall is settled by cutting more positions, shaving costs, and looking for grants. Meanwhile, the local schools that remain are indeed closer to a balanced budget (at least until utility costs spike even higher and yet more global war-making costs hit home in this country).
Humanity Hanging from a Cross of Iron
The cost of the war against Iran is just one reason to be against it. The wanton violence, the indiscriminate death dealing, the gold-plated hubris, and the gargantuan stupidity of Trump and crew, as well as the massive long-term impacts of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, are something to try to take in.
Every war is bad, stupid, and represents a colossal failure of the imagination, but this one, with the Trump trademark on it, should be considered the ur-war to oppose, resist, and refuse to pay for. And sitting in that makeshift meeting room of the New London Board of Education, I felt like a tightly wound, somewhat muted Cassandra, requesting that people who are probably against the war, too, somehow consider it part of the reason we are being called upon to close a school and reduce the quality of our kids’ education.
We have a well-worn poster in the back hallway of our house. It’s an image of kids playing on a metal jungle gym alongside the words: “It will be a great day, when our schools get all the money they need, and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”
A bake sale to buy a bomber? A car wash to get a Tomahawk? A dime drive for the next generation of nuclear submarines? This administration’s officials aren’t even pretending to enlist the public in support of their latest war, nor did they even try to get Congress to rubber-stamp it. They care that little for democracy, the rule of law, or even our hearts and minds. This White House grows fat on our outrage, our protest gestures, and our well-mannered critiques. They are printing money and telling lies in a frenzy of impunity that will (hopefully) finally be checked by the November elections. But there is so much violence and scapegoating and scaremongering coming out of Donald Trump’s White House and his Florida compound that many people are checking out on all of it just to carry on with their lives. But nothing now is NORMAL and we can’t allow ourselves to normalize any of it.
How do we stop this war? How do we redirect the money being wasted into the schools and health centers, bike lanes and sustainable-energy infrastructures that we all so desperately need? How do we take care of those victimized, maimed, and orphaned by our military? How do we take care of those rendered homeless, stateless, limbless by our wars?
The answer: We do something to protest, undermine, and challenge militarism every day. We work to connect those faraway wars, framed as invisible or normal or too complicated for us to grasp, to our everyday lives. We make all the awkward speeches we can. We hold up homemade antiwar signs. We refuse to pay for the wars we oppose. We continue to demand that butter, not guns, schools, not heavy bombers, homes, not destroyers be the focus of our lives.
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