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By Lucy Draper
Deputy News Editor
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More than 13 million children are being prevented from going to school due to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), who have warned that "the hopes of a generation" will be shattered unless they can return to lessons.
In the new report, titled "Education Under Fire", the impact that violence had had on education across nine states—Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, the Palestinian territories, and Turkey— was considered, with a total of 13.7 million children found to be out of school in total.
The report details how more than 2.9 million children in Yemen were not attending school. Six months of fighting in the country has led to the closure of 3,500 schools and 600,000 students missing their exams. In Syria, 52,200 teachers—which accounts for a quarter of the country's teaching professionals—have left their positions since the beginning of the civil war which began in 2011.
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UNICEF found that in Libya, Iraq, Yemen and Syria, almost 9,000 schools weren't able to be used and that more than 700,000 children who are living as refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey could not attend school as the countries in which they are living simply don't have the capacity to take them on as students.
In Gaza, the effects of last summer's 51-day conflict are still being keenly felt, according to the report. 281 schools were damaged and eight destroyed altogether during the war, and UNICEF also note the "deep scars in the psyche of children and their caregivers" which were left by the violence.
Peter Salama, the regional director of UNICEF in the Middle East and North Africa, said, "The destructive impact of conflict is being felt by children right across the region. 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."
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