Some 625,000 displaced and traumatised Palestinian children in Gaza face a second year without classes, while 45,000 six-year-olds have never attended school, according to the United Nations children’s agency Unicef.
“The vast majority of them have been displaced from their homes and are facing a daily battle for survival,” Unicef stated.
Educators argue that the trauma of war is compounded by the absence of normality that school gives to children.
“Anyone our age in other countries is studying and learning,” 14-year-old Ezzedin Qudeh told Israeli newspaper Haaretz. As he spoke, he and his three siblings, the youngest aged four, were hauling concrete blocks for use in construction. “We’re not [learning]. We’re working at something beyond our capacities. We are forced to in order to get a living.”
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UN Palestine refugee agency Unrwa director Philippe Lazzarini has warned of a “lost generation”. He posted on X that Gaza’s places of education “are not schools any more. When the war started Unrwa was forced to close all its schools, turning them into shelters.” He said classrooms that once welcomed children are “either overcrowded with displaced families or destroyed”.
Although 93 per cent of Gaza’s 564 schools have been damaged, many provide a shelter for one million homeless people. At least 39,000 students who missed their final year of school and could not take final exams while 88,000 university students did not graduate as 80 per cent of Gaza’s 12 universities have been damaged or destroyed.
According to Ramallah’s Palestinian education ministry, 10,490 school and university students have been killed and 16,700 injured since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th. In the same period, it says, 500 schoolteachers and university academics have been killed.
Unicef said: “The absence of schooling threatens [younger children’s] cognitive, social and emotional development.” Parents report “mental health and psychosocial impacts [including] feelings of increased frustration and isolation”.
For older children, disruption has created uncertainty and anxiety, Unicef said.
Unrwa’s Gaza education chief Farid Abu Athra told Gaza-based al-Mezan human rights group that students’ losses are irreparable. “This disruption will have long-lasting effects on the academic achievements and personal development of students, likely increasing dropout rates, child labour and early marriage.”
World Health Organisation director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that that the first round of polio vaccinations of Gaza’s 560,000 children of 10 and younger has been successfully completed. A second round is set to begin in four weeks time.
Meanwhile, Unrwa’s Gaza deputy director Sam Rose said one million Gazans will not have enough food this month because Israel has blocked entry to lorries carrying essential supplies that remain trapped along Egypt’s highway to Gaza. Aid agencies have accused Israel of imposing major limitations and delays on deliveries.
Israel’s press office has not replied to a request for comment by The Irish Times.
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