Half million Yemeni students drop out of school since war outbreak: UNICEF

SANAA, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Nearly half a million students have dropped out of school since the civil war erupted in Yemen in 2015, the UNICEF said in a statement on Tuesday.

That brought the total number of out-of-school children to 2 million, it said.

Meanwhile, the UNICEF said that almost three quarters of public school teachers have not been paid their salaries in over a year, putting the education of an additional 4.5 million children at grave risk.

"An entire generation of children in Yemen faces a bleak future because of limited or no access to education," said Meritxell Relano, a UNICEF representative in Yemen. "Even those who remain in school are not getting the quality education they need."

"The journey to school has also become dangerous as children risk being killed en route," Relano said.

"Fearing for their children's safety, many parents choose to keep their children at home. The lack of access to education has pushed children and families to dangerous alternatives, including early marriage, child labor and recruitment into the fighting," he said.

According to the UNICEF findings, close to three quarters of women had been married before the age of 18, while nearly half had been married before age 15, according to a 2016 survey across six governorates.

The UNICEF also said that at least 2,419 children have been recruited in the fighting since March 2015.

Up to 78 percent of all Yemenis live in poverty: 80 percent need some form of social protection support including cash assistance.

An estimated 1.8 million children under 5 years and 1.1 million pregnant or nursing women are acutely malnourished, representing a 128 percent increase since late 2014.

About 16 million Yemenis, including close to 8.2 million children, need humanitarian assistance to establish or maintain access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.

The number of people needing help to access healthcare has more than tripled -- from 5 million before the war to 16 million today.

On March 26, 2015, Saudi Arabia led a military coalition of Arab forces, backed by the United States, to intervene in Yemen's conflict to back the government of exiled President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.

The coalition has launched thousands of airstrikes on the Iran-aligned Shiite Houthis, in attempts to roll back rebel gains and reinstate Hadi in the capital Sanaa.

Houthis have launched hundreds of ballistic missiles toward Saudi cities, with most of them intercepted by Saudi air defense forces.

The war has so far killed more than 10,000 Yemenis, mostly civilians, and pushed the Arab country to the brink of mass famine. Enditem