A recent report published by Save the Children found that after nine years of conflict in Yemen, two in five children, or 4.5 million, are out of school, with displaced children twice as likely to drop out than their peers.
The report, titled ‘Hanging in the Balance: Yemeni Children’s Struggle for Education’, and published to shed light on the growing numbers of children out of school, the reasons behind dropouts, found that one-third of families surveyed in Yemen have at least one child who has dropped out of school in the past two years despite the UN-brokered truce that took effect in 2022.
The report added “while the truce has resulted in reduced hostilities, civilian casualties and displacement, it failed to effectively protect children’s safety, wellbeing and rights including their fundamental right to safe, quality and inclusive education.
The challenging economic situation in Yemen, which has been a major contributor to the crisis in education, according to the report, has also increased protection risks, with parents and caregivers adopting harmful coping mechanisms, such as child labor and child marriage.
The report added “Financial hardships, exacerbated by the economic warfare between the warring parties, have hindered Yemenis livelihoods, compelling parents to confront the difficult prospect of withdrawing their children from schools as they navigate the intricate balance between hoping for a better future for their children and the more urgent reality of their challenging circumstances”.
The report concluded that humanitarian actors find themselves struggling to respond, grappling with a combination of access restrictions and funding shortages.