YEMEN: Saada schools reopen

SANAA, 28 February 2010 (IRIN) - Hundreds of schools in the northern Yemeni province of Saada have reopened after five months of closure following an 11 February ceasefire between Yemen's army and Houthi-led Shia rebels, according to local officials.

More than half the 121,000 students in grades 1-12 who were due to start the current semester last October were invited to return to school on 27 February, Mohammed al-Shamiri, head of the Saada education office, told IRIN.

"We issued a circular calling on all teachers of these schools to come back to their work and resume classes," he said. "We reopened only those schools we can supervise, but not those in districts that are still controlled by Houthis."

During a meeting chaired by Saada governor Taha Abdullah Hajer, provincial education officials agreed that the revised date for the start of the first semester be 27 February and that it should end on 18 May. The second semester is scheduled to run from 23 May to 15 August 2010. The school year usually begins in October and ends in June.

School tents

According to al-Shamiri, some 220 of the governorate’s 725 schools, which were all closed during the war, were completely or partially destroyed or looted.

"The Saada governorate leadership and education ministry are contacting donor organizations on the issue of providing tents to be used as classrooms in locations where schools were destroyed," al-Shamiri told IRIN.

As part of its planned humanitarian response, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has requested funds from donors to support the resumption of education in Saada through the provision of temporary learning spaces such as school tents, teaching kits and basic educational items for children, Aboudou K Adjibadé, UNICEF representative in Yemen, told IRIN.

"Funding is also sought for rehabilitating schools, deploying teachers, including female teachers in order to promote girls attendance, and offering capacity development to the Ministry of Education and local education offices to resume schooling in the wake of the ceasefire," he said.

According to Adjibadé, school tents were provided to relevant bodies in the neighboring governorate of Hajja, where an estimated 120,000 displaced people live.

IDP returns

Abdullah Dhahban, a local council member in Saada, said the government and humanitarian organizations should accelerate the return of thousands of displaced children who cannot access education where they are.

"Very few students had access to education in their areas of displacement,” he said. "After the fighting broke out on 11 August, children who fled with their families couldn't get their files and documents from schools in their home districts so that they could enroll in new schools after displacement."

According to a 22 February report by local NGO Seyaj Organization for Childhood Protection (SOCP), some 383,332 children in Saada (about 97 percent of the governorate's school-age children) have been unable to go to school over the past five months. The figure includes those 121,000 children who were due to start this semester in October and those who had never enrolled in schools.

Source: IRIN.
Link: http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=88255.