(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency) War and upheaval across parts of the Middle East and North Africa in recent years have driven more than 13 million children from school, the United Nations said Wednesday.
A newly published report by the United Nations Children's Fund ( UNICEF), under the title "Education Under Fire" focused on the impact of violence on schoolchildren and education systems in nine countries that have been directly or indirectly impacted by violence.
Attacks on schools and education infrastructure are one key reason why many children do not attend classes. In Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya alone, nearly 9,000 schools are out of use because they have been damaged, destroyed, are being used to shelter displaced civilians or have been taken over by parties to the conflict, the report said.
It estimated that there are more than 8,850 schools in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya that can no longer be used because they have been damaged, destroyed, are sheltering displaced families or are occupied by parties to the conflicts.
Other factors include the fear that drives thousands of teachers to abandon their posts, or keeps parents from sending their children to school because of what might happen to them along the way € or at school itself.
In the Gaza Strip, children use school buildings as shelters because their homes have been destroyed. In Iraq, schools accommodate some of the three million people forced to fee conflict. Across Syria, much of Libya, Sudan and Yemen, parents are not sending their children to school for fear of what might happen to them along the way - or at school itself.
In Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, more than 700,000 Syrian refugee children are unable to attend school because the overburdened national education infrastructure cannot cope with the extra student load.
"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."
The reports called on the international community, host governments, policy makers, the private sector and other partners to reduce the number of children out of school through the expansion of informal education services especially for vulnerable children, provide more support to national education systems in conflict-hit countries and host communities to expand learning spaces and to recruit and train teachers and provide learning materials.
NICEF is a leading humanitarian and development agency working globally for the rights of every child. Child rights begin with safe shelter, nutrition, protection from disaster and conflict and traverse the life cycle: pre-natal care for healthy births, clean water and sanitation, health care and education.
The UN body has spent nearly 70 years working to improve the lives of children and their families. Working with and for children through adolescence and into adulthood requires a global presence whose goal is to produce results and monitor their effects. UNICEF also lobbies and partners with leaders, thinkers and policy makers to help all children realize their rights, especially the most disadvantaged.
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