In Africa, the education of around 750,000 children has been disrupted in two most conflict-affected provinces in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
New figures released by UNICEF show that between January 2022 and March 2023, at least 2,100 schools in North Kivu and Ituri provinces have been forced to stop operating because of the deteriorating security situation.
Insecurity has been especially damaging for the nearly 240,000 recently displaced children living in the vast camps around Goma. Violence by armed groups has forced thousands of families from their homes in search of safety, preventing their children from attending school.
UNICEF Representative Grant Leaity said that school-aged children are paying an unacceptable price for the growing conflict and insecurity in eastern DRC causing hundreds of thousands of children who should be safely learning in the classroom, to be displaced by violence and are living in desperate conditions, and in vast and overcrowded camps.
The scale of the crisis means that the majority of children living in the displacement camps are not able to attend school at all, with only a minority of children able to access UNICEF-supported Child Friendly Spaces or Temporary Learning Centres.
