How war’s toll on schools is creating a bleak future for millions of children

1 / 2
Palestinian teacher Doha al-Attar, a mother of four from Rafah, runs a class for children in a school destroyed during Israeli strikes in Khan Yunis. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 27 January 2025
Follow

How war’s toll on schools is creating a bleak future for millions of children

  • War has kept 18 million children in Sudan and 658,000 in Gaza out of school for nearly two years, with no immediate hope of returning
  • School closures in conflict zones, experts warn, put children at greater risk of exploitation, abuse, and mental health challenges

LONDON: In wartime, the destruction of a school is more than collateral damage — it represents the theft of a child’s future. The past year has been especially bad in this regard, with one in three children in conflict zones or fragile states deprived of schooling.

With wars taking place in Gaza, Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere around the globe, the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, described 2024 as “one of the worst years” in its history for children in conflict.

“By almost every measure, 2024 has been one of the worst years on record for children in conflict in UNICEF’s history — both in terms of the number of children affected and the level of impact on their lives,” said Catherine Russell, the agency’s executive director.

“A child growing up in a conflict zone is far more likely to be out of school, malnourished, or forced from their home — too often repeatedly — compared to a child living in places of peace.

“This must not be the new normal. We cannot allow a generation of children to become collateral damage to the world’s unchecked wars.”

Nearly one in six children worldwide live in conflict zones, with more than 473 million enduring the highest levels of violence since the Second World War, according to the Peace Research Institute Oslo.




Infographic courtesy of Save the Children

In contexts like Gaza and Sudan, where many educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed by fighting and where teachers have been forced to flee, learning and play have been replaced by trauma and loss.

In Gaza, at least 658,000 school-aged children remain out of classrooms for the second consecutive academic year, with around 96 percent of school buildings damaged or destroyed since October 2023, despite their protected status under international humanitarian law.

The Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, which saw 1,200 killed and 250 taken hostage, triggered the devastating war in Gaza, which killed at least 47,000 Palestinians and displaced 90 percent of the population, according to Gazan officials.

Despite the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal reached earlier this month, a return to classrooms in Gaza remains a distant hope. UNICEF said in November that at least 87 percent of the enclave’s schools will require extensive reconstruction before they can reopen.




Palestinians inspect the debris after an Israeli strike near a UN-run school in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip on October 21, 2023. (AFP)

Although Israel says it does not deliberately target civilian infrastructure, few educational institutions have been spared damage, including UN-run schools sheltering displaced civilians.

UN experts voiced concern last year over what they considered the systematic destruction of education in Gaza, not only through the crippling of schools and colleges but also the arrest and killing of teachers.

“It may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as scholasticide,” the UN experts said in a joint statement.

“These attacks are not isolated incidents. They present a systematic pattern of violence aimed at dismantling the very foundation of Palestinian society,” the statement added, lamenting that “when schools are destroyed, so too are hopes and dreams.”




People inspect the damage following an Israeli strike on the UNWRA-run Al-Majda Wasila school housing displaced Palestinians in Gaza City on December 14, 2024. (AFP)

By September last year, at least 10,490 school and university students and more than 500 schoolteachers and university lecturers had been killed, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Education.

In October alone, the UN documented at least 64 Israeli attacks on schools in Gaza, averaging almost two attacks per day.

“Schools should never be on the front lines of war, and children should never be indiscriminately attacked while seeking shelter,” UNICEF’s Russell said in early November.

“The horrors we are seeing in Gaza are setting a dark precedent for humanity, one where children are hit with bombs at record numbers while looking for safety inside classrooms. Trauma and loss have become their daily norm.”




A man inspects the damage at the site of an Israeli strike that targeted the Musa bin Nusayr School in the Al-Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City on December 22, 2024. (AFP)

The situation is equally dire in Sudan, where a brutal civil war has wrought havoc on civilians and critical infrastructure since April 2023, killing tens of thousands and displacing more than 11.4 million, according to UN figures.

Attacks on schools, which Save the Children reports have increased fourfold since the conflict began, have forced most institutions to close, leaving more than 18 million of the country’s 22 million children without a formal education for more than a year.

Such attacks, Save the Children says, include airstrikes on schools, the abduction, torture, and killing of teachers, and sexual violence against students inside education facilities.

Other violations include armed groups occupying schools, using them to store weapons, and fighting battles on school grounds.




People fleeing violence in Sudan reside at the Hasahisa secondary school in Jazira state (AFP photo)

Adil Al-Mahi, MedGlobal’s Sudan country director, believes that even if the violence ends, a full return to normal education is unlikely in the near future.

“Cities controlled by the Rapid Support Forces are badly damaged, including education facilities in those areas,” Al-Mahi told Arab News.

By early 2024, the paramilitary RSF had seized most of the capital, Khartoum, and much of Al-Jazirah state, Sudan’s agricultural heartland.

INNUMBERS

25 million Children in 22 conflict-affected countries who are out of

103 million Children in 34 conflict-affected countries denied schooling in 2024.

(Source: Save the Children)

However, in January, the Sudanese Armed Forces announced they had advanced into Omdurman, Sudan’s second-largest city, located in Khartoum state, reclaiming some areas previously held by the RSF.

Schools in these areas have been “used by the RSF as warehouses for military equipment,” and therefore many have been targeted by the air force, Al-Mahi said. “Around 70 percent of the facilities might not be safe for children’s education.”




A teacher invigilates middle school students during their end-of-year exams in the northern Sudanese village of Usli on November 24, 2024. (AFP)

Aid agencies warned in May that Sudan is on the brink of the world’s worst education crisis. Displacement has compounded the already dire situation, even in areas where schooling remains relatively accessible.

With no formal camps for internally displaced persons, many families have sought refuge on school grounds, disrupting the education of local children, said Al-Mahi.

In the eastern coastal city of Port Sudan, for example, “some schools have reopened,” but they face significant challenges as “the schools themselves were used as shelters for IDPs arriving from the conflict area.”




Students walk at the beginning of the new the academic year in Sudan's Red Sea State, at Wahda School west of Port Sudan, on September 16, 2024. (AFP)

Al-Mahi said the situation has created tensions with local communities, who wanted to reclaim the spaces and reopen the schools.

A similar issue emerged in the River Nile state. However, according to Al-Mahi, “the problem was resolved to get the families out of the classrooms and have them in proper tents in the open areas within the school — the playgrounds — and then have the schools also operate.”

Nevertheless, facilities in these areas continue to struggle with overcrowding. “Most of the cities that received IDPs have seen their populations increase three or fourfold, making it very difficult to accommodate children, even if the school is no longer housing IDPs,” Al-Mahi said.




Aisha Yesufu, a leader of Nigeria's Bring Back Our Girls movement, delivers a speech on April 14, 2019, during the 5th Year Commemoration of the abduction of the 276 Chibok Schoolgirls by Boko Haram terrorists on April 14, 2014 in Chibok, Borno state. (AFP)

The disruption of formal learning in conflict zones has cast a shadow over children’s futures, leaving many with mental health issues and at an increased risk of child labor and child marriage.

“Education is lifesaving,” James Cox, Save the Children’s global education policy and advocacy lead, told Arab News.

“School protects children from things like child labor, early marriage and pregnancy, recruitment into armed forces, and helps build critical thinking, healthy social relationships, and mental wellbeing.

“Children being denied their right to education on any scale has significant implications for society as well as the individual children. Studies have shown that in low- and middle-income countries, the probability of conflict has almost tripled when the level of educational inequality doubled.”




A Rohingya refugee woman teaches language at a school in Kutupalong refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladeshon August 10, 2022. (AFP)

It also impacts economic prosperity. UNESCO estimates that by 2030, the annual global social costs of children who leave school early will reach $6.3 trillion — or 11 percent of global gross domestic product.

Cox also warned that “when children are prevented from attending school for a long period, learning is significantly impacted — and can often regress.”

He said: “The longer children are out of school, the greater the risk that they never return — and, without the right support, of dropping out for those who try to return.”

For school-age children in conflict zones, the mental health impact can be immense. Jeeda Al-Hakim, a specialist counseling psychologist at City University of London, described being out of school as “an emotional wound that goes beyond missed lessons.

“School offers much-needed stability, a sense of normalcy, and a safe space to form friendships and express themselves,” she told Arab News. “Without it, children are left isolated and burdened by uncertainty, often grappling with feelings of fear, loss, and despair.”




Children attend class at a makeshift school set up in a camp for internally displaced Syrians, in the village of Haranabush, Idlib province, on September 29, 2024. (AFP)

Many of those children “are thrust into adult responsibilities — caring for siblings or finding ways to survive — while their own emotional needs are sidelined,” she said.

“Premature adultification can lead to profound feelings of loneliness and anxiety, as children miss out on the freedom to simply be children.”

Stressing that “the emotional cost of these experiences cannot be understated,” Al-Hakim said: “While informal learning or community support can provide glimmers of hope, nothing replaces the emotional security and opportunities that come from a stable environment.

“To truly support these children, we must prioritize ending the conflicts that strip them of both their childhoods and their futures.”
 

 


Israel army issues evacuation warning for parts of Gaza City

Updated 5 sec ago
Follow

Israel army issues evacuation warning for parts of Gaza City

The evacuation order comes at the beginning of the Eid Al-Adha holiday
Israel has faced mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: The Israeli military issued an evacuation order for residents of parts of Gaza City on Friday ahead of an attack, as it presses an intensified campaign in the battered Palestinian territory.

“This is a final and urgent warning ahead of an impending strike,” army spokesman Avichay Adraee said.

The army “will strike all areas from which rockets are launched.”

The evacuation order comes at the beginning of the Eid Al-Adha holiday, one of the main religious festivals of the Muslim calendar.

The Israeli military has recently stepped up its campaign in Gaza in what it says is a renewed push to defeat Hamas, whose October 2023 attack sparked the war.

International calls for a negotiated ceasefire have grown in recent weeks.

Hamas’s lead negotiator, Khalil Al-Hayya said on Thursday that the Palestinian Islamist group was ready to enter a new round of talks aimed at sealing a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

Talks aimed at brokering a new ceasefire have failed to yield a breakthrough since the last brief truce fell apart in March with the resumption of Israeli operations in Gaza.

Israel and Hamas appeared close to an agreement late last month, but a deal proved elusive, with each side accusing the other of scuppering a US-backed proposal.

Israel has faced mounting pressure to allow more aid into Gaza, after it imposed a more than two-month blockade that led to widespread shortages of food and other essentials.

It recently eased the blockade and has worked with the newly formed, US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to implement a new aid distribution mechanism via a handful of centers in south and central Gaza.

But since its inception, the GHF has been a magnet for criticism from the UN and other members of the aid world — which only intensified following a recent string of deadly incidents near its facilities.

Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, at least 4,402 people have been killed since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,677, mostly civilians.

Homes smashed, help slashed: no respite for returning Syrians

Updated 26 min 41 sec ago
Follow

Homes smashed, help slashed: no respite for returning Syrians

  • The community center, funded by UNHCR, offers vital services that families cannot get elsewhere in a country scarred by war
  • “We have no stability. We are scared and we need support,” said Fatima Al-Abbiad, a mother of four

DAMASCUS: Around a dozen Syrian women sat in a circle at a UN-funded center in Damascus, happy to share stories about their daily struggles, but their bonding was overshadowed by fears that such meet-ups could soon end due to international aid cuts.

The community center, funded by the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR), offers vital services that families cannot get elsewhere in a country scarred by war, with an economy broken by decades of mismanagement and Western sanctions.

“We have no stability. We are scared and we need support,” said Fatima Al-Abbiad, a mother of four. “There are a lot of problems at home, a lot of tension, a lot of violence because of the lack of income.”

But the center’s future now hangs in the balance as the UNHCR has had to cut down its activities in Syria because of the international aid squeeze caused by US President Donald Trump’s decision to halt foreign aid.

The cuts will close nearly half of the UNHCR centers in Syria and the widespread services they provide — from educational support and medical equipment to mental health and counselling sessions — just as the population needs them the most. There are hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees returning home after the fall of Bashar Assad last year.

UNHCR’s representative in Syria, Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, said the situation was a “disaster” and that the agency would struggle to help returning refugees.

“I think that we have been forced — here I use very deliberately the word forced — to adopt plans which are more modest than we would have liked,” he told Context/Thomson Reuters Foundation in Damascus.

“It has taken us years to build that extraordinary network of support, and almost half of them are going to be closed exactly at the moment of opportunity for refugee and IDPs (internally displaced people) return.”

BIG LOSS
A UNHCR spokesperson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the agency would shut down around 42 percent of its 122 community centers in Syria in June, which will deprive some 500,000 people of assistance and reduce aid for another 600,000 that benefit from the remaining centers.

The UNHCR will also cut 30 percent of its staff in Syria, said the spokesperson, while the livelihood program that supports small businesses will shrink by 20 percent unless it finds new funding.

Around 100 people visit the center in Damascus each day, said Mirna Mimas, a supervisor with GOPA-DERD, the church charity that runs the center with UNHCR.

Already the center’s educational programs, which benefited 900 children last year, are at risk, said Mimas.

Nour Huda Madani, 41, said she had been “lucky” to receive support for her autistic child at the center.

“They taught me how to deal with him,” said the mother of five.

Another visitor, Odette Badawi, said the center was important for her well-being after she returned to Syria five years ago, having fled to Lebanon when war broke out in Syria in 2011.

“(The center) made me feel like I am part of society,” said the 68-year-old.

Mimas said if the center closed, the loss to the community would be enormous: “If we must tell people we are leaving, I will weep before they do,” she said

UNHCR HELP ‘SELECTIVE’
Aid funding for Syria had already been declining before Trump’s seismic cuts to the US Agency for International Development this year and cuts by other countries to international aid budgets.

But the new blows come at a particularly bad time.

Since former president Assad was ousted by Islamist rebels last December, around 507,000 Syrians have returned from neighboring countries and around 1.2 million people displaced inside the country went back home, according to UN estimates.

Llosa said, given the aid cuts, UNHCR would have only limited scope to support the return of some of the 6 million Syrians who fled the country since 2011.

“We will need to help only those that absolutely want to go home and simply do not have any means to do so,” Llosa said. “That means that we will need to be very selective as opposed to what we wanted, which was to be expansive.”

ESSENTIAL SUPPORT
Ayoub Merhi Hariri had been counting on support from the livelihood program to pay off the money he borrowed to set up a business after he moved back to Syria at the end of 2024.

After 12 years in Lebanon, he returned to Daraa in southwestern Syria to find his house destroyed — no doors, no windows, no running water, no electricity.

He moved in with relatives and registered for livelihood support at a UN-backed center in Daraa to help him start a spice manufacturing business to support his family and ill mother.

While his business was doing well, he said he would struggle to repay his creditors the 20 million Syrian pounds ($1,540) he owed them now that his livelihood support had been cut.

“Thank God (the business) was a success, and it is generating an income for us to live off,” he said.

“But I can’t pay back the debt,” he said, fearing the worst. “I’ll have to sell everything.”


Netanyahu admits Israel supporting anti-Hamas armed group in Gaza

Updated 06 June 2025
Follow

Netanyahu admits Israel supporting anti-Hamas armed group in Gaza

  • Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel is supporting an armed group in Gaza that opposes the militant group Hamas, following comments by a former minister that Israel had transferred weapons to it.
Israeli and Palestinian media have reported that the group Israel has been working with is part of a local Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab.
The European Council on Foreign Relations (EFCR) think tank describes Abu Shabab as the leader of a “criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks.”
Knesset member and ex-defense minister Avigdor Liberman had told the Kan public broadcaster that the government, at Netanyahu’s direction, was “giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons.”
“What did Liberman leak? That security sources activated a clan in Gaza that opposes Hamas? What is bad about that?” Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on Thursday.
“It is only good, it is saving lives of Israeli soldiers.”
Michael Milshtein, an expert on Palestinian affairs at the Moshe Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, told AFP that the Abu Shabab clan was part of a Bedouin tribe that spans across the border between Gaza and Egypt’s Sinai peninsula.
Some of the tribe’s members, he said, were involved in “all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that.”


Milshtein said that Abu Shabab had spent time in prison in Gaza and that his clan chiefs had recently denounced him as an Israeli “collaborator and a gangster.”
“It seems that actually the Shabak (Israeli security agency) or the (military) thought it was a wonderful idea to turn this militia, gang actually, into a proxy, to give them weapons and money and shelter” from army operations, Milshtein said.
He added that Hamas killed four members of the gang days ago.
The ECFR said Abu Shabab was “reported to have been previously jailed by Hamas for drug smuggling. His brother is said to have been killed by Hamas during a crackdown against the group’s attacks on UN aid convoys.”
Israel regularly accuses Hamas, with which it has been at war for nearly 20 months, of looting aid convoys in Gaza.
Hamas said the group had “chosen betrayal and theft as their path” and called on civilians to oppose them.
Hamas, which has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades, said it had evidence of “clear coordination between these looting gangs, collaborators with the occupation (Israel), and the enemy army itself in the looting of aid and the fabrication of humanitarian crises that deepen the suffering of” Palestinians.
The Popular Forces, as Abu Shabab’s group calls itself, said on Facebook it had “never been, and will never be, a tool of the occupation.”
“Our weapons are simple, outdated, and came through the support of our own people,” it added.
Milshtein called Israel’s decision to arm a group such as Abu Shabab “a fantasy, not something that you can really describe as a strategy.”
“I really hope it will not end with catastrophe,” he said.


Gaza marks the start of Eid Al-Adha with outdoor prayers among the rubble and food growing ever scarcer

Updated 06 June 2025
Follow

Gaza marks the start of Eid Al-Adha with outdoor prayers among the rubble and food growing ever scarcer

  • Israeli offensive has destroyed large parts of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of its population of roughly 2 million Palestinians
  • After blocking all food and aid from entering Gaza for more than two months, Israel began allowing a trickle of supplies to enter

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Palestinians across the war-ravaged Gaza Strip marked the start of one of Islam’s most important holidays with prayers outside destroyed mosques and homes early Friday, with little hope the war with Israel will end soon.

With much of Gaza in rubble, men and children were forced to hold the traditional Eid Al-Adha prayers in the open air and with food supplies dwindling, families were having to make do with what they could scrape together for the three-day feast.

“This is the worst feast that the Palestinian people have experienced because of the unjust war against the Palestinian people,” said Kamel Emran after attending prayers in the southern city of Khan Younis. “There is no food, no flour, no shelter, no mosques, no homes, no mattresses ... The conditions are very, very harsh.”

The Islamic holiday begins on the 10th day of the Islamic lunar month of Dhul-Hijja, during the Hajj season in Saudi Arabia. For the second year, Muslims in Gaza were not able to travel to Saudi Arabia to perform the traditional pilgrimage.

The war broke out on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 hostages. They are still holding 56 hostages, around a third of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight living hostages from Gaza and recovered dozens of bodies.

Since then, Israel has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians in its military campaign, primarily women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry which does not distinguish between civilians or combatants in its figures.

The offensive has destroyed large parts of Gaza and displaced around 90 percent of its population of roughly 2 million Palestinians.

After blocking all food and aid from entering Gaza for more than two months, Israel began allowing a trickle of supplies to enter for the UN several weeks ago. But the UN says it has been unable to distribute much of the aid because of Israeli military restrictions on movements and because roads that the military designates for its trucks to use are unsafe and vulnerable to looters.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome said Thursday that Gaza’s people are projected to fall into acute food insecurity by September, with nearly 500,000 people experiencing extreme food deprivation, leading to malnutrition and starvation.

“This means the risk of famine is really touching the whole of the Gaza Strip,” Rein Paulson, director of the FAO office of emergencies and resilience, said in an interview.

Over the past two weeks, shootings have erupted nearly daily in the Gaza Strip in the vicinity of new hubs where desperate Palestinians are being directed to collect food. Witnesses say nearby Israeli troops have opened fire, and more than 80 people have been killed according to Gaza hospital officials.

Israel has accused Hamas of stealing aid and trying to block it from reaching Palestinians, and has said soldiers fired warning shots or at individuals approaching its troops in some cases.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a newly formed group of mainly American contractors that Israel wants to use to replace humanitarian groups in Gaza that distribute aid in coordination with the UN, said Friday that all its distribution centers were closed for the day due to the ongoing violence.

It urged people to stay away for their own safety, and said it would make an announcement later as to when they would resume distributing humanitarian aid.


Lebanese army warns Israeli airstrikes might force it to freeze cooperation with ceasefire committee

Updated 06 June 2025
Follow

Lebanese army warns Israeli airstrikes might force it to freeze cooperation with ceasefire committee

  • The Lebanese army said it started coordinating with the committee observing the ceasefire after Israel’s military issued its warning and sent patrols to the areas that were to be struck to search them

BEIRUT: The Lebanese army condemned Friday Israel’s airstrikes on suburbs of Beirut, warning that such attacks are weakening the role of Lebanon’s armed forces that might eventually suspend cooperation with the committee monitoring the truce that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war.
The army statement came hours after the Israeli military struck several buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs that it said held underground facilities used by Hezbollah for drone production. The strikes, preceded by an Israeli warning to evacuate several buildings, came on the eve of Eid Al-Adha, a Muslim holiday.
The Lebanese army said it started coordinating with the committee observing the ceasefire after Israel’s military issued its warning and sent patrols to the areas that were to be struck to search them. It added that Israel rejected the suggestion.
The US-led committee that has been supervising the ceasefire that ended the 14-month Israel-Hezbollah war in November is made up of Lebanon, Israel, France, the US and the UN peacekeeping forces in Lebanon known as UNIFIL.
“The Israeli enemy violations of the deal and its refusal to respond to the committee is weakening the role of the committee and the army,” the Lebanese army said in its statement. It added such attacks by Israel could lead the army to freeze its cooperation with the committee “when it comes to searching posts.”
Since the Israel-Hezbollah war ended, Israel has carried out nearly daily airstrikes on parts of Lebanon targeting Hezbollah operatives. Beirut’s southern suburbs were struck on several occasions since then.
The conflict between Hezbollah and Israel began on Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began launching rockets across the border in support of its ally, Hamas, in Gaza. Israel responded with airstrikes and shelling and the two were quickly locked in a low-level conflict that continued for nearly a year before escalating into full-scale war in September 2024.
It killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, while the Lebanese government said in April that Israeli strikes had killed another 190 people and wounded 485 since the ceasefire agreement.
There has been increasing pressure on Hezbollah, both domestic and international, to give up its remaining arsenal, but officials with the group have said they will not do so until Israel stops its airstrikes and withdraws from five points it is still occupying along the border in southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah says that it has ended its military presence along the border with Israel south of the Litani River, in accordance with terms of the ceasefire deal.