UNICEF: Future of 4.5 Yemeni Schoolchildren at Stake

“The future of 4.5 million students hangs in the balance,” Rajat Madhok, the spokesman of the UN the UNICEF warned, as classrooms in the capital Sana’a and Yemen’s northern regions remained largely closed to students on Sunday, the belated first day of school in the country.

Schools in Yemen were supposed to open on September 30 as the start of the scholastic year but were forced to postpone the opening day for two weeks amid a persisting deadly war imposed by Saudi Arabia and the ensuing hunger, a cholera epidemic and an economic collapse.

Back in April, UNICEF Representative in Yemen Mertixell Relano warned that the ongoing war might prevent a whole generation of children from education this year.

“At the moment, we have more than 166,000 teachers in the country that have not received a salary since October last year,” she said at the time, adding that the out-of-school boys might then be easily recruited by Saudi militia groups and “the girls might be at risk of being married earlier.”

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen since March 2015 to restore power to fugitive president Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed at least 15,000 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

According to several reports, the Saudi-led air campaign against Yemen has drove the impoverished country towards humanitarian disaster, as Saudi Arabia’s deadly campaign prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country.

The cholera outbreak in Yemen which began in April, has also claimed over 2,100 lives and has infected 750,000, as the nation has been suffering from what the World Health Organization (WHO) describes as the “largest epidemic in the world” amid a non-stop bombing campaign led by Saudi Arabia. Also Riyadh’s deadly campaign prevented the patients from traveling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country.

According to reports, the cholera epidemic in Yemen, which is the subject of a Saudi Arabian war and total embargo, is the largest recorded in modern history.