Gaza blockade threatens education crisis: UNICEF
GENEVA (AFP) — Hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza are being deprived of a proper learning environment amid the continued Israeli blockade of the impoverished coastal strip, the United Nations children's agency warned on Friday.
Schools resume on Saturday after the winter break but classrooms are without heat and lighting after Israel cut fuel and electricity supplies to the Palestinian territory.
"Children are forced to work in catastrophic conditions, without heat or electricity," UNICEF spokeswoman Veronique Taveau told journalists.
"Some 56 percent of Gazans are under 18 years old, and that means that children are bearing the brunt of restrictions, whether it is of food, fuel or school supplies," she said.
Enrolment levels and test scores already point to a deep decline in educational levels in Gaza, which has been ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement since bloody internecine strife last June.
Enrolment figures for school grades 1-10 have dropped to 91.2 percent in 2006-7 from 96.8 percent in 2000-1, UNICEF said.
Rights group Human Rights Watch has denounced Israel's blockade of Gaza as collective punishment and contrary to international law.
Israel has branded Gaza a hostile territory, citing continued rocket attacks by radicals against it from the coastal strip.
