13 million children denied education by Mideast wars: UN

A UN report detailed cases of students and teachers coming under direct fire, classrooms used as makeshift bomb shelters and children having to cross active front lines just to take their exams.

Young Iraqi children who fled the violence in the northern city of Tal Afar play at the Bahrka camp for internally displaced people, some ten kilometres west of Erbil, in the autonomous Kurdistan regiShow more

AMMAN // More than 13 million children are being denied an education by Middle East conflicts, the UN said on Thursday, warning “the hopes of a generation” would be dashed if they cannot return to classrooms.

In a report on the impact of conflict on education in six countries and territories across the region, the United Nation’s children fund Unicef said more than 8,850 schools were no longer usable due to violence.

It detailed cases of students and teachers coming under direct fire, classrooms used as makeshift bomb shelters and children having to cross active front lines just to take their exams.

“The destructive impact of conflict is being felt by children right across the region,” said Peter Salama, regional director for Unicef in the Middle East and North Africa.

“It’s not just the physical damage being done to schools, but the despair felt by a generation of schoolchildren who see their hopes and futures shattered.”

Unicef documented 214 attacks on schools in Syria, Iraq, Libya, the Palestinian territories, Sudan and Yemen last year.

In Syria, it said education was paying a “massive price” after four and a half years of conflict.

One in four schools have been closed since the conflict began, causing more than two million children to drop out and putting close to half a million in danger of losing their schooling.

“The killing, abduction and arbitrary arrest of students, teachers and education personnel have become commonplace” in the region, it said.

Hundreds of schools and colleges in Yemen have been closed since March, when a Saudi-led coalition launched air strikes on Iran-backed Houthi rebels who had seized the capital Sanaa and parts of the country.

According to residents, at least seven schools in Yemen have been requisitioned by warring forces to be used as makeshift barracks or shelters for displaced families.

“The Houthis have turned some schools into barracks, depriving students of the second semester of the school year,” a Sanaa-based teacher, who gave his name as Abdel Hakim.

Abdel Rab Hassan, a director of a school in Sanaa, said that “tanks and anti-aircraft guns have been stationed in schools” since fighting broke out in March.

In the Gaza Strip, which saw a 50-day war last year between Hamas militants and Israel kill about 2,200 Palestinians and 73 on the Israeli side, the UN said at least 281 schools had been damaged, and eight “completely destroyed”.

“My children were injured in a school. They saw people injured with missing hands or legs, with wounded faces and eyes,” the report quoted Gaza mother-of-two Niveen as saying.

“They no longer see school as a safe place.”

Unicef said that violence in Iraq, where pro-government forces are battling the ISIL extremist group, has had a severe impact on the schooling of at least 950,000 children.

Unicef called for better informal education services in countries affected by school closures and for donor nations to prioritise education funding throughout the Middle East.

“With more than 13 million children already driven from classrooms by conflict, it is no exaggeration to say that the education prospects of a generation of children are in the balance,” it said.

* Agence France-Presse