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STORY: GAZA / CHILDREN OUT OF SCHOOL
TRT: 06:43
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ARABIC / NATS
DATELINE: 31 AUGUST 2025, GAZA CITY
1. Various shots, UNRWA schools turned into displacement shelters
2. Various shots, local government schools converted into displacement centers
3. Various shots, Diana Mustafa Shalhah, displaced from Al-Shujaiya neighborhood to western Gaza City.
4. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Diana Shalhah, displaced child:
“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.”
5. Various shots, school turned into displacement center
6. Various shots, child Jana Al-Dahdouh, living with her family as displaced persons inside school
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Jana Al-Dahdouh:
“We live in a school. We want to return so that we can study here. We have no food and we sleep here. We need to return in order to study at school.”
8. Various shots, streets
9. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Nasma Abu Nasr, Palestinian child:
“Two years of our lives have gone for nothing. If not for the war, I would now be preparing for school, buying a pen and school supplies. Now we search for water and food, we run after water and after community kitchens. We are children, world — we want to live like other children. My father was killed in the war. What is my fault that I became an orphan in this war? What is my fault that I am deprived of my family and of everything?”
10. Various shots, residents collecting drinking water
11. Various shots, children sitting amid rubble of destroyed home
12. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Maya Mousa, Palestinian child:
“Before the war, our lives were much better. We used to go to school, get certificates, and learn. Life was more beautiful than during the war.”
13. Various shots, children scavenging through piles of garbage to collect nylon and cardboard for use in cooking fires
14. Various shots, Malak Al-Kafarneh searching through garbage piles to collect nylon and cardboard
15. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Malak Al-Kafarneh, Palestinian child:
“We want the war to end. 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.”
16. Various shots, children
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) said that around 660,000 children in Gaza are out of school and risk becoming a 'lost generation.'"
The war in Gaza and the destruction of 95 per cent of educational infrastructure has left over 660,000 children out of school – nearly all of Gaza’s school-aged population.
Many former UN-run schools are now being used as shelters for displaced people.
A report to the UN Human Rights Council found that Israeli forces systematically destroyed education infrastructure in Gaza and described these actions as possible war crimes.
In a post on his official X account, Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA Commissioner-General said, “Gaza is in ruins. So is its education system. The Israeli Forces have destroyed or damaged most schools and education facilities in Gaza. Today, instead of going back to school, like most children around the world, around 660,000 girls and boys in Gaza will be sifting through the rubble, desperate, hungry, traumatized and mostly bereaved. The longer they stay out of school with their trauma, the higher the risk they become a lost generation, sowing the seeds for more hatred and violence. Ceasefire is the only way forward, to reverse the famine and the “Scholasticide” hitting the children of Gaza.”
UNRWA has been providing learning services in Gaza in Temporary Learning Spaces (TLSs) 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 TLSs, established across 67 UNRWA schools-turned-shelters.
Between 11 and 17 August 2025, a total of 5,059 children (2,100 boys, 2,959 girls, including 38 children with disabilities) benefited from TLS-based learning activities in 139 active TLSs.
UNRWA has completed the second cycle of its Distance Learning Programme in Gaza from 19 April to 26 July 2025. Over 290,000 students could access online material in Arabic, English, Mathematics, and Science, facilitated by thousands of teachers.
Access remains very challenging to provide children with regular learning opportunities given cuts in telecommunications and electricity.
