For 61 million children there is no going back to school

Armed conflicts, poverty and social exclusion prevent 61 million children worldwide aged between six and 11 years from having access to primary education, according to UNICEF. A circumstance that distances them from the possibility of reading and writing and drives them to a future without a future, conditioned among other factors by their illiteracy. From 1990 to 2007 the percentage of children out of school declined gradually, but in recent years this figure has stagnated. “We are working to maintain the momentum that all children can go to school and to improve the quality of education,” said Blanca Corazo, head of programs of Unicef Spain, on Thursday, International Literacy Day.
Among the countries with the lowest enrollment rates are Liberia, South Sudan and Afghanistan. In the first case, 66% of children have access to primary education; a percentage that drops to 59 in the second and 46 in the third. Syria deserves specific mention, where the war ravaging the country for the past five years has prevented two million children in the country from going to school, and another 600,000 from doing so in states where they take refuge, reports UNICEF. “Because of these conflicts, children who previously had the opportunity to go to school do not have it any longer,” explains Corazo. For in the case of refugees, abandoning school adds to the hardness of the route that the smallest ones are facing. According to the latest data from the UN agency, about 50 million children live far from their place of origin.