Safe environment
Resilient schools, resilient communities
The challenge
The children of Tajikistan are highly vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters, including frequent earthquakes, mudflows, landslides, floods, rock falls, and avalanches. The vast majority of children (88.3 per cent) live in areas of high to very high seismic hazard.
Inadequate school infrastructure, which is unable to cope with these natural hazards, presents a significant danger to children’s lives and wellbeing, causing significant economic losses to the system, and severe disruption to or loss of education.
About 26 per cent of schools in urban areas and 50 per cent of schools in rural areas have no access to clean water piped into the compound or yard. Most of the schools have very basic pit latrines, separate for boys and girls. Older children (above Grade 5) do not commonly use toilets at school. Lack of safe water, adequate toilets, menstrual hygiene management facilities, and privacy often discourage teenage girls from attending school.
Eighteen per cent of the girls interviewed for a 2015 UNICEF survey of out-of-school children mentioned poor sanitation facilities in schools as the reason for their not attending the schools.
Resilient schools, resilient communities
Because of Tajikistan’s proneness to natural disasters such as landslides and earthquakes, UNICEF will support the inclusion of disaster risk reduction for resilience in the national curriculum and teacher training.
UNICEF and other development partners are supporting the Ministry of Education and Science to conduct a comprehensive school safety assessment. The assessment will provide a snapshot of school vulnerabilities to hazards, and to make recommendations for investment scenarios that integrate safety into both existing and new school infrastructure.
UNICEF is collaborating with partners to facilitate an enabling educational system environment that will strengthen the resilience of children and provide safe education spaces. Its interventions are intended to prepare children and their communities for possible disasters and reduce their impact. Children, teachers, parents, and other community members will be trained and educated to understand and manage risks and to learn risk reduction, preparedness, and response actions for emergencies caused by floods, landslides, earthquakes, or other risks.
To help achieve sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) for all, UNICEF is contributing to improving equipping selected schools and health facilities with safe drinking water, improved sanitation facilities, and hygiene education that encourages the development of healthy behaviours for life.
UNICEF focuses on policy advocacy for improved WASH in schools, to complement an integrated programme of WASH hardware and hygiene and sanitation promotion to improve the access of women and children in selected project focus areas across Tajikistan. To achieve this, UNICEF is working in close collaboration with the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources (MoEWR), the Ministry of Education and Science (MoE) and the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of the Population (MoHSPP) to implement relevant interventions at national and sub-national levels.
