The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) on Friday said over 2.93 million children across Ethiopia remain out of school due to severe drought and ongoing conflict in the country, reported The CGTN Africa.
In the latest Ethiopia Situation Report, UNOCHA said 2.53 million children drop out of school due to conflict and 401,000 children are forced to remain out of school due to drought.
As per the report, about 85 percent of schools in Ethiopia’s Tigray region require desks and blackboards, as well as 4,400 schools in parts of Ethiopia’s Afar and Amhara regions.
The UNOCHA report further stated that school closures have impacted school feeding programs for more than one million primary school children.
The report said that high humanitarian needs are likely to continue well into 2023 due to expanding drought and increased violence. It also disclosed that 20 million people in Ethiopia, including 13 million people in northern Ethiopia, are facing food insecurity and are in immediate need of food assistance.
According to the UN Humanitarian agency, in some areas of Ethiopia, drought is also compounded with violence, including in the southern Oromia region due to conflict and in the Somali region due to inter-communal conflicts, exacerbating previous humanitarian needs and hindering access to hundreds of thousands of people in need of assistance.
Notably, four consecutive failed rainy seasons have left more than 18.5 million people in acute food insecurity across the Horn of Africa region in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti.
The number is expected to increase due to below-average rainfall in March-May, 2022, according to the UNOCHA.
The Horn of Africa region is experiencing severe drought, the worst in 40 years. The crisis has compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict, desert locusts and now a further surge in food and commodity prices due to the conflict in Ukraine.
