ActionAid International: Gaza children demand to return to schools to learn instead of living inside them

ActionAid International said on Monday that children in the Gaza Strip are demanding to return to their schools to learn instead of living inside the schools.

In a statement, the institution said about 625,000 school-age children in Gaza have not been able to go to school since October 7, 2023, after the Israeli aggression on the Strip ended aspects of normal life, WAFA News Agency reported.

Since then, it said, almost all residents have been displaced from their homes – many multiple times – and schools have been transformed from places of learning into shelters hosting thousands of displaced people.

The agency pointed out that the past 11 months have had a devastating impact on Gaza’s educational infrastructure, with some 90 percent of Gaza’s 307 government school buildings destroyed, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education. Additionally, all of Gaza’s 12 universities have been damaged or destroyed.

“Children who are traumatized and exhausted from living in a war zone without adequate food, water and other basic necessities want the routine and normality that school represents,” it noted.

“In the West Bank as well, hundreds of school children are being deprived of their right to education, as increasing restrictions on their movement, as well as incidents of harassment, intimidation and violence, prevent them from going to school,” ActionAid International said.

“Going to school is not a luxury, it is a basic right, yet hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza are being denied an education for the second school year in a row,” said Reham Jafari, ActionAid Palestine’s Communications and Advocacy Officer.

“Today, 58,000 children were supposed to have the chance to start school for the first time – instead, they face another day living under relentless bombardment and in unimaginable humanitarian conditions,” she added.

Jafari said an entire generation is being denied the chance to learn and build a better future for themselves, she said, adding that “it is past time for this crisis to end: there must be a lasting ceasefire now.”