2nd November, 2015
More than a million more children are at risk of dropping out of school in Iraq and joining the estimated two million already missing school, thanks to the ongoing violence in the country, according to UNICEF.
Peter Hawkins, the organisation’s representative in Iraq, said the impact of the conflict on education there is "nothing short of devastating".
“Large numbers of children – those in host communities, displaced from their homes, as well as refugee children from Syria – continue to experience significant disruptions to their education, putting Iraq at risk of losing an entire generation to conflict,” he said.
UNICEF said that an additional 1.2 million children are at risk of dropping out of school in a country where nearly one in five schools – more than 5,300 – cannot be used because they have been destroyed, damaged, converted to shelter for displaced families or used for military purposes by parties to the conflict. Nearly a million children remain displaced from their homes, about 70 per cent of whom have already lost a full year of schooling.
Meanwhile, in the past year alone, 67 attacks on schools and education personnel were reported in Iraq. In the north of the country, nearly 14,000 teachers have been forced to flee violence. And UNICEF says that among schools that remain in use, class sizes are reaching as high as 60 students, and operating in two or three shifts daily.
The organisation, which, along with partners, has in the past year have built 40 new schools and installed more than 140 prefabricated classrooms across the country as well as established some 1,500 temporary learning spaces enabling more than 222,000 displaced children to continue their education, requires an additional $US68 million by the year’s end to increase access to education for children in Iraq with $US12 million required immediately.
– DAVID ADAMS
