For youth in war-torn nations, education suffers profoundly. Schools are destroyed by indiscriminate shelling or deliberately turned into military posts. Children and teachers stay at home, afraid to step on a landmine or be caught in the crossfire of warring parties. The house of learning, envisioned as a safe haven, becomes a target.

For nearly a decade, photographer Diego Ibarra Sánchez has examined how conflict interrupts, interferes with, and obstructs learning. “Education is supposed to be the way forward, the way to build or rebuild a nation,” he observes. What happens to that goal when academic institutions can’t play their part?

After exploring that question in Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Colombia, Ibarra Sánchez turned to the Donbass region