The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has announced that it will increase its efforts to help 500,000 children in Mali return to school this fall. Since January 2012, conflict in the northern part of the country has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and caused a severe humanitarian crisis. Now, amidst government efforts to rebuild, UNICEF has announced new programs and asked for funding to help the nation’s children restart their education.
In addition to displacement due to violent conflict, a food and nutrition crisis and seasonal flooding have contributed to disrupting education in Mali. An estimated 800,000 children have been affected.
UNICEF has already delivered learning materials to the region for 90,000 students and will train 9,000 teachers this coming school year. Efforts will be made to repair and rebuild schools that have been destroyed, and temporary learning spaces will be set up in the meantime.
Francoise Ackermans, UNICEF’s representative in Bamako, says that more funding is needed to implement the programs.
“In the North, many schools have been looted and children have no other option but to sit on the floor during class. More than half of the schools in Timbuktu and Gao are still in need of teaching, learning, and recreational materials, including notebooks and desks,” she announced.
In Timbuktu, 12-year-old Aminata is returning to school.
“My first day of school last year, I was very happy,” she says. “But now we have nothing. The fear is gone but we have a lot of concerns…The UNICEF notebooks are not enough for us.”
Including those displaced by the conflict, a total of 1.2 million children in Mali are out of school. Though UNICEF’s campaign is a big step forward, additional efforts are needed to repair Mali’s educational system.
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