Education in emergencies
Even under fire, UNICEF helps children access education.
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What are the issues?
The fighting in recent years and the resulting population displacement have significantly destabilised an already weakened education system.
The education sector has paid a heavy price for the crisis.
Temporary Learning and Protection Spaces for Children (ETAPEs), which are emergency structures providing displaced children with access to education, have been burned down and ransacked.
For children who have dropped out of school, the risk of being recruited by armed groups, engaging in criminal activities or being subjected to forced labour is very high. Girls are also at risk of sexual violence, early marriage and teenage pregnancy.
Our actions to promote children's education in emergency situations
Through ETAPEs, UNICEF provides for children's schooling, care and protection needs during and after episodes of violence.
UNICEF supports the Emergency Unit set up by the Ministry of Education to coordinate emergency education responses. Together with its partners, UNICEF is strengthening the capacities of decentralised actors so that they can take charge of the emergency response.
UNICEF will need to ensure that the school has the capacity to accommodate them in a protective environment with teachers trained to meet their learning needs.
UNICEF support enabled the establishment of temporary learning spaces and supported the training of thousands of community teachers in basic pedagogy and psychosocial support.
The organisation has also established catch-up programmes for children who have missed school since 2014, when more than 65% of the country's schools were closed or not functioning due to fighting.