Yemen's children struggle to study amid war

Taiz, Yemen - Fifth-grader Amr Khalil, 12, sits on the floor with about 30 other students. He stares at his teachers, his mind too busy to think about the pain in his back from sitting on the uncomfortable floor.

Khalil is one of the thousands of students in the city of Taiz who now study inside private homes after their schools were damaged by fighting, transformed into shelters for families displaced by the war raging in Yemen, or used by Popular Resistance militias fighting against the Houthi rebel group.


He is a student at the Nema Rasam School where more than 2,000 students were forced out by the Popular Resistance, which uses the school as a centre. Now, Nema Rasam's students go to school in places that do not have the necessary equipment - not even chairs.

Due to violence and the closure of schools, more than 350,000 children were unable to resume their education in the past school year, bringing the total of out-of-school children in Yemen to over two million, according to UNICEF. The Nema Rasam school is one of 2,108 schools across Yemen that UNICEF believes can no longer be used as a result of the conflict.