Years of war and unrest devastated education in the Middle East and North Africa, leaving more than 13 million children without safe or reliable schools across the region, according to a new report from UNICEF.
The report, “Education Under Fire,” which was released on Sept. 3, details the bitter cost of war on the future of millions of children. The report focuses on nine countries where millions have been displaced by near constant conflict and bombing since 2011.
More than 8,850 schools in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen are unusable “because they have been damaged, destroyed, are sheltering displaced families or are occupied by parties to the conflicts,” the authors noted. Just in 2014, 214 schools were attacked in the region.
