Losing out on school: how conflict and hunger rob children of their futures – Excerpt on Gaza from ‘WFP stories’

العربية

23 September 2024

WFP looks at the fallout of unrest and the loss of school meals in countries where we operate

/…

Gaza

Ahmad in front of a temporary tent school where he studies in central Gaza. Photo: WFP/Jaber Badwan

Ahmad’s family moved from the West Bank to Gaza in hopes he and his siblings would receive quality schooling. “I want my kids to have a better life than mine,” says Ahmad’s mother, Nour.

But nearly a year of war has destroyed or damaged roughly 560 Gazan schools, experts say, and deprived hundreds of thousands of traumatized kids of an education. Ahmed has seen bodies torn to shreds by bombings and survived multiple displacements to crowded tent camps, where temperatures soar in the summer and freeze in winter.

“I fear bombings and airstrikes,” says Ahmad, whose family now lives in the central town of Deir al-Balah. “I fear when a house or tent nearby suddenly explodes and disappears.”

For now, he goes to an ‘educational tent,’ where WFP supplies young students with date bars and other nutritious snacks to stave off soaring hunger and malnutrition that stalks the enclave.

Teacher Ikram, who founded the educational initiative in Gaza, says it will be difficult for students to return to any kind of educational normalcy. Photo: WFP/Jaber Badwan

“This initiative tries its best to embrace kids by offering them a safe space and taking them away from difficult tasks they shouldn’t be doing,” says teacher Ikram, who founded the educational initiative.

“If the war ends today, it’s going to be extremely difficult for kids to go back to schools,” Ikram adds, “or to any shape of educational normalcy.”

/…