Africa: Drought puts 3.6M children at risk of dropping out of school
The Horn of Africa’s drought is putting nearly four million kids at risk of dropping out of school, the UN has warned, raising concerns that it could result in “a lost generation.”
According to a recent report, UNICEF estimates that due to the burden that four straight seasons of drought have put on families, 3.6 million children in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia are in danger of dropping out of school.
The fact that the number has more than tripled in the last six months, from 1.1 million, is a sign of how critical the situation is becoming in many areas. This has brought millions of families dangerously close to starvation and poverty.
Abhiyan Jung Rana, UNICEF’s education adviser for eastern and southern Africa, is quoted as saying in the report: “In the Horn of Africa, there are about 15 million children out of school, including these countries. But the fear is that because of the drought an additional 3.6 million more children will drop out as they’re moving with their parents to different areas away from their school”.
In Somaliland, an autonomous province of Somalia, teachers and activists claim that females are primarily dropping out of school as a result of the drought, which is said to be having the worst impact on girls.
Sadia Allin, country director for Plan International, an NGO in Somaliland, stated that, “When the chips are down, it is always the girls who bear the brunt of the situation,” she added, “It is very worrying. Education provides immediate physical, psychological, and cognitive protection. For girls, being out of school is disappointing. It is impacting their dreams”.
She added that it appears that girls are losing their education when they feel like they are “Their rights are being taken away.
The displacement of entire families to other villages with limited educational capacity, including both boys and girls, was a major factor in their vulnerability, according to UNICEF, who stated that it did not expect a discernible difference between the two genders in terms of the numbers of children at risk of dropping out.
Africa: Drought puts 3.6M children at risk of dropping out of school
The absence of school feeding programmes and parents’ inability to pay for basic necessities like books are both listed by the UN agency as contributing factors that raise the likelihood that a kid may drop out of school.
According to the reports, UNICEF predicts that 1.57 million children, nearly equally divided between boys and girls, are at risk of dropping out of school in Kenya, 1.14 million in Ethiopia, and 900,000 in Somalia, including Somaliland.
