A/66/269 77. The Special Rapporteur underlines that investing in preventive efforts through education is crucial to protect schools and the communities they serve from the impact of natural disasters. Therefore, education systems must be actively engaged in the development and implementation of risk management strategies. Through their regular activities, schools must also contribute to establishing a culture of prevention and preparedness among students, staff and the communities to which they belong. Considering that the risks and needs of communities vary greatly, even within the same region, it is important to ensure that risk management strategies are prepared through meaningful participatory processes involving the communities where schools are located. D. Ensuring attention to girls and marginalized groups 78. The failure of Governments to tackle persistent inequalities based on income, gender, location, ethnicity and language is one of the reasons for the limited progress in the realization of the Education for All goals 59 as well as the Millennium Development Goals. Obstacles to schooling that are already present during periods of normality have their impact obviously magnified in emergency contexts. The costs of schooling can greatly increase and commuting between school and home often becomes very difficult and insecure, further excluding those living in poverty or more vulnerable to violence. In this sense, targeted initiatives identifying marginalized groups and addressing their specific needs are necessary to avoid widening inequalities in education. 79. Efforts to ensure gender parity in education are particularly relevant in this context. Attention has been drawn to the pervasive harm of sexual violence during conflict, which directly and indirectly affects female teachers and students. 60 Insecurity on the way to and from and within schools or colleges appears as a central element in the exclusion of girls from the education system. The lack of separate sanitary facilities in emergency schools can also constitute a major barrier to girls’ education. 80. Despite the obvious resource constraints experienced in emergencies, neglecting the impact of discrimination and structural inequalities in education while planning, implementing and evaluating education policies in these situations can lead to further marginalization and in some cases contribute to a recurrence of conflict. 81. Refugees and internally displaced persons continue to face great obstacles when seeking education outside their communities of origin. Data collected by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees within official camps indicated limited and uneven access to education across camps; the overall primary school participation rate of refugee children in camps was 69 per cent and at the secondary level only 30 per cent. 61 Several countries maintain administrative barriers to the enrolment of both refugee and internally displaced children, despite human rights obligations to provide education without discrimination of any kind to __________________ 59 60 61 11-44589 UNESCO, EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009, Summary, Overcoming Inequality: Why Governance Matters, pp. 4, 7 and 39. UNESCO, EFA Global Monitoring Report 2011, p. 190. Dryden-Peterson, S., “Conflict, education and displacement”, in Conflict & Education: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Toronto, 2011. 19