GENEVA, Switzerland — The number of children
forced out of school or who have seen their education disrupted in conflict and
crisis-torn countries has nearly tripled in six years to 222 million, the
UN said Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
That is up from 75 million children estimated to be
in the same situation in 2016, the UN’s Education Cannot Wait (ECW) program
found in a fresh report.
This is a “shocking, shameful number”, ECW chief
Yasmina Sherif told reporters, stressing that “222 million dreams” were being
dashed by lacking access to uninterrupted education.
A full 78.2 million of the
children are estimated to
be completely out of school due to often protracted conflicts and emergencies —
54 percent of them are girls, while 17 percent are children with disabilities,
the report found.
Another nearly 120 million children living in
crisis-prone areas attend school but in such difficult conditions that they do
not achieve minimum proficiency in mathematics or reading.
Other children may be attaining the minimum
proficiency, but cannot reach their potential due to lacking services like
school meal programs or psychosocial support for the many struggling with
trauma, Sherif explained.
The analysis
found that 84 percent of the fully out-of-school children were living in areas
with protracted crises, including in Afghanistan, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Yemen.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since
February 24 has meanwhile pushed millions more children out of school.
The most recent estimate indicates the conflict has
impacted around 5.7 million school-aged children, ECW pointed out.
Sherif voiced particular concern over the situation
in Afghanistan, where girls have been all but excluded from secondary education
since the
Taliban regained control of the country last August.
“It’s very important that the world now speaks up,”
she said.
“We cannot allow Afghan girls in secondary education
not to come back to school.”
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