Qatar to help educate children in conflict areas 

(MENAFN - The Peninsula) The Doha International Institute for Family Studies and Development, a member of the Qatar Foundation, is working on a project to assist children in conflict areas in the Middle East who have been denied school education, to study at home.

The Institute is currently preparing study material in Arabic that would help parents teach their children at home. Once ready, the material would be made available to families in Iraq, Palestine, Sudan as well as some African countries in the first phase of the project, Managing Director of the Institute, Dr Richard G Wilkins (pictured) told The Peninsula yesterday.

The Institute was established two-and-a-half years ago under the patronage of H H Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, with the mission to help in building strong families and support family values at the local, regional and international levels.

"About 40 percent of the children in the world have been denied school education due to wars and conflicts and a major chunk of them are in the Middle East and African countries. Home-schooling is not a permanent solution to the problem, but it can prevent an entire generation from remaining uneducated," said Wilkins.

He added that home-schooling had proved effective in various countries, including the US, before school education became popular. "Even Abraham Lincoln was taught at home by his mother," noted Wilkins.

"We don't have to start from scratch because some study material prepared by NGOs is already available in these countries. We will utilise them in the project. Sometimes, both the father and mother would be illiterate and they would have to be taught first," he added.

The home-schooling project is one of the multifarious projects the Institute has undertaken. It has a research division that conducts studies and research on a wide range of topics such as decline in population and fertility rates, marital problems, domestic violence, impact of media and pornography on children and the impact of working couples on the growth of children.

The policy division at the Institute holds regular meetings with policy makers at the United Nations with ideas and suggestions to promote family values. "Some people ask why Qatar is not ratifying the UN Convention on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Many don't know that the Convention has called motherhood as a "harmful traditional stereotype". Many of these conventions reflect the abstract notions of academicians, not the commonsensical belief of ordinary people," said Wilkins, adding that the Institute has been trying to correct such wrong perceptions on a global level.

The policy division is now preparing for its annual "Doha Briefing" at the UN, which is expected to take place in March next year. The briefing will focus on the UN programme regarding the role of families in economic development. The implementation division at the Institute has produced three documentaries on family life and a TV advertisement highlighting the importance of parenting in collaboration with the Al Jazeera channel.

"We are working closely with the Supreme Council of Family Affairs, particularly in implementation of its national strategy for families," said Wilkins.