UNICEF scales up emergency education in Gaza, aiming to reach over 336,000 children this year after war damaged 90% of schools.
GENEVA: The United Nations has announced a major push to get hundreds of thousands of children across the war-scarred Gaza Strip back to school.
Nearly 90% of schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the war began in October 2023. More than 700,000 school-aged children have been left without access to formal education, according to UNICEF.
“Almost two and a half years of attacks on Gaza’s schooling have left an entire generation at risk,” agency spokesman James Elder told reporters.
UNICEF is dramatically scaling up its education initiative in what Elder described as “one of the largest emergency learning efforts anywhere in the world”. The organisation currently supports over 135,400 children at more than 110 learning spaces, many in tents.
It now aims to more than double that number to include over 336,000 children by the end of this year. The goal is to get all school-age children back into in-person learning by 2027.
UNICEF is working on the project with the Palestinian education ministry and UNRWA, which before the war schooled around half of Gaza’s children. The agency needs RM408 million for its Gaza education programme this year.
Getting children back to school “is not a ‘nice to have’. It is an emergency”, Elder insisted. He highlighted that Gazans had some of the world’s highest literacy rates before the conflict.
“Today that legacy is under attack: schools, universities, and libraries have been destroyed, and years of progress erased,” he said.
Elder also stressed that learning in Gaza was “lifesaving”. These centres provide safe spaces in a dangerous territory and connect children to health and protection services.
The education push comes as more aid has entered Gaza since a fragile ceasefire took effect last October. UNICEF has brought in over 4,400 recreational kits and 240 School-in-a-Carton kits.
It expects the total number of kits to surpass 11,000 by the end of the week, with nearly 7,000 more in the pipeline.
