Yemen school rehab creates cleaner, safer learning environment

ADEN -- A six-year, US-funded project to improve learning conditions in war-torn Yemen's schools has helped more than 407,000 students obtain an education.

Since 2016, the $18 million project, implemented by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in partnership with the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), has rehabilitated 256 schools in Yemen.

UNICEF has updated water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities at the schools, thereby improving attendance, and has provided staff with indoor cleaning kits: soap, brooms, buckets, mops and disinfectant.

Safe latrines are particularly important for girls, USAID said in a November statement, "as a lack of safe latrines is consistently cited by teachers and parents for why girls, particularly adolescent girls, are not able to attend school".

The project also provided schools with educational supplies, UNICEF communication specialist Kamal al-Wazizah told Al-Mashareq.

Schools received 33,800 desks, 947 whiteboards and 175,000 student kits that included a backpack with notebooks, pens, pencils, erasers and coloured pencils, according to USAID.

The project also provided training for 2,126 educators on child-centred teaching methodologies and active learning, al-Wazizah said, and has worked to strengthen community engagement, among other activities.

The schools were selected "based on a needs study submitted to them by the education offices in the different provinces", Dahle province school project engineer Jamal Ali told Al-Mashareq.

In co-operation with UNICEF, he said, the education offices identified what was needed to rehabilitate the schools and support the creation of a suitable and clean environment conducive to learning.

"The project put the schools back in service" after learning was suspended because of the ongoing war and the direct and indirect targeting of schools, he said.

It contributed to increased enrollment, improved learning conditions and a healthy atmosphere in the targeted schools, Ali said.

Houthis 'killing children'

The Iran-backed Houthis targeted Al-Salam school in al-Deir, a village in Hajjah province's Hayran district, with an Iranian-made drone during the December 12 morning session, Yemeni officials said.

The attack left one child dead and three others seriously injured, according to Minister of Information Muammar al-Eryani.

"The Houthis are targeting schools and civilian objects in homicidal behaviour against the children of Yemen that has transgressed all international laws," said Fahmi al-Zubairi, director general of the human rights office in Sanaa.

The militia is killing the children of its own supporters by pushing them to the battlefronts to fight in its ranks, and is targeting the children of its adversaries with missiles provided by Iran, he told Al-Mashareq.

Meanwhile, with the war now in its eighth year, Yemen's difficult economic conditions have left state agencies "far from being able to repair what the war has destroyed", economist Abdul Aziz Thabet told Al-Mashareq.

"United Nations statistics show that more than 3,000 schools were out of service from the vandalism and destruction to which they were subjected, either by direct shelling or from their use as military barracks or security headquarters, especially by the Houthis," he said.

According to UN estimates, he added, two million school-age boys and girls in Yemen are currently out of school.

"Economic conditions, poverty, stoppage of business activity, the continuing war and lack of opportunities prevent children from attending school," Thabet said.

The USAID project is of great importance "in light of the inability of the relevant government agencies to carry out their work and rehabilitate schools", he said.