Gaza's lost generation: 'Nearly all' school-aged population out of education, UN says

Almost two years into the war in Gaza, alongside the ever-mounting death toll and flattened infrastructure, there’s another casualty of war: children’s education. With "nearly all" school-aged children out of education, the United Nations says they're at risk of becoming a "lost generation."

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), 23 months into the conflict with Israel, some 660,000 children are out of education - “nearly all” Gaza’s school-aged population.  

Former school buildings are now used to house people displaced by the fighting.

Diana Shalhah is a displaced child living in a former UN school:

"Instead of studying in school, we are now living inside it. We carry a bag of clothes instead of a schoolbag. We neither play nor learn. There is no education now. We live inside the school, where we are displaced, eat, and sleep."

According to the UN, 95 percent of educational infrastructure has been destroyed since the war began. A report to the UN Human Rights Council found that Israeli forces targeted school and university buildings in Gaza, a possible war crime.

The children affected are now at risk, the UN says, of becoming a "lost generation."

"We want the war to end," says Malak Al-Kafarneh, a young Palestinian girl living in Gaza. "We want to return to our homes. We want to go back to school. We want to do something useful. It has been a long time since we ate anything that sustains us. We want to go back to our houses and live a normal life. This is not a life."

UNRWA has been providing learning services in Gaza in Temporary Learning Spaces (TLS) and through its distance learning initiative.

To date, more than 59,000 children, over half of them girls, have benefited from learning and recreational activities delivered in 455 TLS, established across 67 UNRWA schools-turned-shelters. 

But access remains very challenging given ongoing cuts in telecommunications and electricity.