Some 350,000 children have had to quit school because of the conflict in Yemen
By Emma Batha
LONDON, March 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Yemen's children are paying the heaviest price in the country's war, the U.N. children's agency warned on Monday, as the country teeters on the brink of famine following two years of conflict.
Here are some facts:
- Nearly 10 million children - four fifths of all children - need humanitarian assistance.
- 2.2 million children are malnourished.
- Close to half a million have severe acute malnutrition, nearly three times the figure in 2014, with numbers rising rapidly.
- UNICEF estimates at least one child dies every 10 minutes from preventable causes like malnutrition, diarrhoea, and respiratory tract infections.
- Around 80 percent of families are in debt or are borrowing money to feed their children.
- Yemen's health system is on the verge of collapse. Nearly 7 million children have no access to health care.
- Some 350,000 children have had to quit school because of the conflict, bringing the total number out of school to 2 million.
- Up to 1,600 schools are out of action because they have been damaged or destroyed, or because they are being used by warring parties or to house displaced families.
- Attacks on schools have more than quadrupled in the last year while attacks on hospitals and health facilities have increased by a third.
- More than 1,540 children have been killed and 2,450 maimed.
- More than two thirds of girls are married off before they reach 18, compared to half before the conflict escalated.
- More than 1,570 boys have been recruited into armed conflict in the last two years, some as young as eight.
Source: UNICEF report: "Falling through the cracks: The children of Yemen"
(Editing by Ros Russell; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit news.trust.org to see more stories.)
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