Yasmine Sherif, Director of the UN Emergency Education Fund, said that the number of students whose schools were interrupted due to various crises has almost tripled since 2016, reaching a record 222 million.
He said a third of those students are completely out of school, and more than half, 119.6 million, go to school without reaching “minimum proficiency levels”, particularly in math and reading.
“This means that 222 million dreams have been reclaimed,” he added.
“We will not abandon these victims. We will help make these dreams come true,” the official said.
This “scandalous” figure, which mostly concerns youth under the age of 18 living in conflict zones, is a “record”.
In the last census of 2016, only 75 million students were in this situation. According to him, the increase in the last six years is related to the covid-19 pandemic, climate change and the continuation of armed conflict.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, more than eight in ten, these children and youth live in areas where conflict has been raging for years, such as Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Afghanistan.
The ongoing conflict affecting the schooling of 5.7 million students in Ukraine is also contributing to the increase seen this year.
source: Noticias
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