With an estimated 19 million children out of school for months because of war, Sudan is on the verge of becoming “the worst education crisis in the world,” U.N. officials say.
The young girls and boys, wearing colorful scarves, tattered shirts and flip-flops, ran across the dusty ground to form jagged lines and face the teachers at the start of the school day.
The children, hundreds of them gathered in makeshift classrooms, had arrived in this aid camp in recent months after fleeing the war in their homeland of Sudan. But even as they began to gain a sense of normalcy in their schooling, many were still burdened with memories of the vicious conflict they endured, which had left loved ones dead and their homes destroyed.
“We know that pain is lasting inside their hearts,” said Mujahid Yaqub, a 23-year-old who fled Sudan and now teaches English at the school in the Wedwil refugee center, in Aweil in South Sudan. Many of the children, he said, were unable to focus in class and often cried over the memories of their terrifying escape from shellings and massacres.
“We want to inform them that there’s hope,” he said, but “it is painful.”
Universities and primary and secondary schools across Sudan remain closed six months after the war began, jeopardizing the future of an entire generation. With an estimated 19 million children out of school, Sudan is on the verge of becoming “the worst education crisis in the world,” the United Nations Children’s Fund warned this month.
Teachers across the northeast African nation have gone unpaid and young people out of school have been exposed to physical and mental threats, including recruitment into armed groups.
Universities and government educational offices have been destroyed or used as defense positions, and at least 171 schools have been turned into emergency shelters for displaced people, according to a spokesman with the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
“If this war continues, the damage to the education system will be irreparable,” said Munzoul Assal, who until April was a social anthropology professor at the Faculty of Economics and Social Studies at the University of Khartoum.
The war between the Sudanese Army, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, has killed up to 9,000 people and injured thousands more, according to the U.N.
