They have hardly made their journey on the trajectory called life. Yet they have had to witness which most adults would shudder to even imagine. With hopes in their hearts and dreams in their eyes, the thousands of children in Gaza wake up every morning to secure for themselves a better future with higher education. But at the end of the day, they cannot even venture out of step one.
Millions of people have been displaced from their homes in Gaza as an aftermath of the continuing conflict between Israel and Palestine and if anyone needs telling, thousands of those refugees comprise of children. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) runs schools for refugee children in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria and a latest report released by the agency on the progress of the children state that Palestinian children in Gaza are light years behind their counterparts in other parts.
The tests reveal that more than two-third of the children in Gaza failed in Mathematics while the literacy rate hardly reached 30%. Poverty still reigns supreme in the volatile region and the education of the children is suffering.
The factor responsible for such abysmal performance of the children in Gaza is not hard to decipher. Gaza is the main centre of the ongoing fight between Israel and Palestine and with no solution appearing in the long distance, the violence is only going to multiply. So the children’s fate hangs in the balance.
There are hardly any safe buildings in Gaza where classes can be held. There are 200 schools in the region controlled by the UNRWA while 350 more are under the Palestinian Authority. Classes are often disrupted due to the sudden and almost daily bomb and missile attacks and due to the shortage of classrooms, classes are held in shifts.
The UN says that it will hire an extra 1,500 classrooms and will also upgrade the education process with lessons in Arabic ad Mathematics given more emphasis. It also aspires to create better facilities for the training of teachers. Lofty ideas indeed but the naked truth is that as long as the Israel-Palestinian crisis is not resolved, the children’s education won’t get much improved.
Source: Reuters
