Yemen's Crisis Forces Millions of Children Out of School and Into Labor

Eleven-year-old Hasnaa Jaber collects empty plastic bottles to sell for recycling in Taiz, Yemen. While children at a nearby school prepare for their break, Hasnaa walks through empty farmland on the outskirts of Taiz city, collecting discarded plastic bottles. Hasnaa lives with her impoverished family in an informal settlement for people displaced by the country’s more than decade-long war. Instead of going to school, she works alongside her family to help make ends meet.

“My dream is to become a teacher. I studied up to the third grade, but then I dropped out of school along with my two older brothers to help my father,” Hasnaa told Al Jazeera. The new academic year began in government-controlled areas of Yemen on August 30, but Hasnaa and other children from families in difficult financial situations like hers are not in the classroom. She is one of 3.2 million children who are out of school in Yemen this year, according to an estimate by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), an increase from 1.8 million children in 2015.

Hasnaa earns around 1,500 Yemeni rials (around $1) a day selling plastic bottles to scrap traders. That money is welcomed by her father, 35-year-old Jaber Ali, who fled his hometown near Taiz eight years ago due to fighting. Jaber explained that rising living costs and scarce work forced him to choose between sending his children to school or providing basic food, stating that food is the top priority.

According to the Yemen Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP) by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), nearly 6.6 million Yemeni children are in need of education assistance in 2026. Ammar al-Sharjabi, an education expert, noted that dropping out deprives children of their right to education and increases the risk of early child labor, illiteracy, poverty, and unemployment. A source at the Ministry of Education in Aden confirmed that these economic pressures are a direct result of the ongoing war and its economic fallout.

A recent Save the Children assessment found that 92 percent of surveyed households do not know where their next meal will come from, and 84 percent cannot afford basic educational expenses. Thirteen-year-old Ahmed Abdulelah is another dropout who left school to work at a grocery store after his father died of cancer, allowing his younger siblings to stay in class and continue their education.