TAEZ, Yemen — Dozens of children kneel in an outdoor,
makeshift classroom at the start of the school year in Yemen, where coronavirus
and a brutal war have left them facing a bleak future.
اضافة اعلان
The youngsters in the impoverished Arab country's third city
of Taez make do and learn as best they can, seven years into a conflict that
has killed tens of thousands and forced millions to flee their homes.
"We study one day on the bare floor, another day on the
rooftop and some days in the street," seventh-grader Laith Kamel told AFP.
"For four years, we have been wanting to go to a real
school."
Across the country children either have no classes at all or
lack basics such as desks, chairs or bathrooms.
Many schools have been destroyed in the conflict between the
government and the Houthi
rebels, while others have been turned into refugee
camps or military facilities.
About 2 million children were without school even before
COVID-19 hit, according to the United Nations, which has warned the number will
likely rise.
Dropouts
For those enrolled in the Al-Thulaya school in Taez, where
annual tuition is approximately $1 per pupil, classes are held in an unfinished
building.
School officials say the beleaguered government, locked in
conflict with the rebels, cannot provide proper facilities. So the meagre
tuition fees go almost entirely on rent for the bare, grey building, which has
no glass in its windows or functioning sewage system.
Teachers at the school know conditions are completely unfit
for children, noting also that there are many dropouts and runaways.
"There are dropouts because there are no basic services
like chairs and bathrooms," says Abdulghani Mahyoub, the principal of
Al-Thulaya, which has about 900 students.
"We live in the open. Most students are studying
outside in the yard."
What's more, "children get sick all the time" in
the overcrowded classrooms, teacher Asia Ahmed says.
A city of 600,000 people under government control but
besieged by the Houthi rebels since 2015, Taez is one of Yemen's most troubled
cities, and has been repeatedly bombed by the insurgents.
The coronavirus pandemic has only made life harder for
children and teachers alike.
A third wave of infections has struck Yemen's 30 million
people just as the school year begins, government officials said in August.
Masks and social distancing to curb the spread of
COVID-19 are luxuries most cannot afford in Yemen, where the war has driven millions of
displaced to the brink of famine.
Yemen has so far reported nearly 8,000 coronavirus cases,
including more than 1,470 deaths, but the UN says testing is scant and real
numbers are likely much higher.
Teachers go unpaid
The UN children's agency said the COVID outbreak had forced
an early end to both the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 academic years.
It disrupted the "education of nearly 5.8 million
primary and secondary school children, including 2.5 million girls,"
UNICEF has estimated.
The overall total could rise as high as six million, the
agency warned in a July report.
Yemen is enduring what the UN says is the world's worst
humanitarian crisis.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, mostly
civilians, according to aid groups.
About 3.3 million people have been displaced and more than
80 percent of the population needs assistance, the UN has said.
"To make matters worse, two-thirds of teachers in Yemen
— over 170,000 teachers in total — have not received a regular salary for more
than four years," according to UNICEF.
"This puts around four million additional children at
risk of disrupted education or dropping out as unpaid teachers quit teaching to
find other ways of providing for their families."
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