A/HRC/22/59 E. Attacks on schools and hospitals; children’s rights to health and education 18. Syria has over 20,000 schools, and in 2010 its school enrolment, attendance and completion rates compared favourably with those of the region. In the current conflict, various credible reports suggest that between 2,400 and 3,900 schools have been damaged by military operations. Thousands more have been converted into shelters for displaced persons, undermining access to education particularly in contested areas where displacement is high. The pace of displacement is likely to bring further pressure to bear on educational infrastructure. Other schools have been taken over by anti-Government armed groups (see below). 19. The commission has collected accounts of Government attacks on at least 17 schools. In some cases, schools were reportedly being used as bases for anti-Government armed groups, thereby losing their status as protected civilian objects. However, there are reasonable grounds to believe that other attacks on schools were unlawful and in some cases deliberate. One soldier from an army brigade stationed in Dara’a said that his commanding officer had verbally given an order to hit schools harshly “so that they don’t go out on demonstrations.” The soldier said that he had defected because the army was attacking children and schools without discrimination. 20. Areas contested or held by anti-Government armed groups have significantly lower attendance rates. Security forces have a presence around some schools, and families sometimes prevent their children from attending out of fear for their safety – in some cases school children have been threatened directly. Attacks on schools sometimes lead to displacements of entire families: a woman from rural Dara’a said that families had left her village one week after the girls’ secondary school was shelled in January 2013, killing one student and injuring another. Many had moved to a nearby village which they believed the Government was protecting for sectarian reasons. 21. The conflict has deeply affected health services. Hospitals have come under direct attack (see A/HRC/22/59, annex XII). A worker at Dar Al-Shifa hospital in Aleppo said that a Government helicopter had fired nine missiles at the hospital in August. Syrian security forces have forced medical staff to inform on children wounded in Government offensives and deny them treatment. One 12 year old boy who was helping evacuate wounded children on a city street in Damascus in July was seriously injured by indiscriminate fire from an army vehicle. He said that the young people who took him to hospital, his father, and medical staff all told him to say that he had been shot by “terrorists,” but he insisted on telling the truth. Doctors there continued to treat him while warning him of the risks that he was bringing on himself. 22. Elsewhere, doctors and others have refused treatment to wounded children. One man from rural Dara’a said that when a school in rural Dara’a was shelled, his fleeing 11 year old sister was hit and seriously injured. Rescuers tried to take her to hospital in the garrison town from where the shelling came, but military checkpoints on the way refused to let her pass. Her rescuers reached the hospital by back roads, and staff at the hospital there refused to treat her, saying that it was a military hospital (her rescuers believed that it was in fact civilian). Although she lost consciousness there, doctors insisted that she be moved to a hospital in a bigger town, where she died shortly after arrival. 23. In 2010, child health indicators in Syria compared favourably with those in the wider region. This progress is being threatened by the protracted conflict. Syrian pharmaceutical factories used to produce much of the country’s supply, but Syrian mothers of young children in northern Jordan told the commission that vaccines for children ceased to be available in Dara’a around June, and in Damascus around November. Imported 82 GE.13-10627