Forty per cent of children from five conflict-scarred Middle Eastern countries are not attending school, the United Nations agency for children said on Thursday, warning that losing this generation will lead to more militancy, migration and a dim future for the region. An estimated 13.7 million school age children from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya and Sudan are not in school, out of a total of 34 million, UNICEF said. The dropout rate could increase to 50pc in coming months as conflicts intensify, Peter Salama, the agency’s regional chief, has said. "We are on the verge of losing a generation of children in this region," he said. "We must act now or we will certainly regret the consequences."
He said UNICEF needs an additional $300 million this year to make a dent in the numbers and give more children access to education. The agency so far has received $140 million, or 40pc of its 2015 appeal, for the education of displaced Syrians.
Thursday's report marks the first attempt to show the scope of the regional education crisis, Salama said. The report said that education is increasingly being disrupted by fighting and the displacement of millions of people. Close to 9,000 schools in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya have either been destroyed in fighting, turned into shelters for displaced people or been commandeered by fighters, UNICEF said.
In Syria and Yemen, one in four schools can no longer be used for education, the report said. In Syria, 50,000 teachers no longer report to work, while thousands of children have to cross front lines to take their school exams. "The forces that are crushing individual lives and futures are also destroying the prospects for an entire region," the report said.
Salama said he believes lack of access to education is helping drive the increasingly desperate attempts by Middle Eastern asylum seekers to reach Europe. Children who are not going to school are also more vulnerable to recruitment by militant groups, he said. He said that UNICEF has seen a rise in recruitment attempts, in parallel with the drop in school enrollment.
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