Back to work, not school: Yemen’s crisis forces children to drop out, tell me about this news in (https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/9/9/back-work-not-school-yemen-crisis-forces-children-drop-out)

The article “Back to work, not school: Yemen’s crisis forces children to drop out,” published by Al Jazeera on September 9, 2026, reports on how severe economic hardship and the ongoing conflict in Yemen are forcing millions of children out of classrooms and into the workforce to help their families survive.Key Highlights of the Report:

• The Scale of the Education Crisis: According to UNICEF estimates highlighted in the report, around 3.2 million children in Yemen are out of school in 2026a steep rise from 1.8 million when the conflict began in 2015. Additionally, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) notes that nearly 6.6 million children currently require educational assistance due to conflict, poverty, and collapsing public services.
• Survival over Schooling: As the new academic year began in late August, impoverished families faced a desperate trade-off between education and basic survival. Soaring inflation and scarce employment mean that parents often cannot afford basic necessities like school uniforms, books, or stationery, let alone daily food.
• Personal Stories from the Ground:
  • Hasnaa Jaber (11 years old): Living in an informal settlement for displaced families outside Taiz, Hasnaa collects and sells discarded plastic bottles to earn around 1,500 Yemeni rials (about $1) a day. Although her dream is to become a teacher, she dropped out after the third grade because her father’s earnings from washing cars could no longer feed the family.
  • Ahmed Abdulelah (13 years old): Working in a grocery store after his father passed away from cancer, Ahmed took on the role of breadwinner. He gave up on returning to school entirely to ensure his earnings could keep his three younger siblings enrolled in classes.
• Socio-Economic Data: The report cites a recent assessment by Save the Children across roughly 2,000 households in southern and southwestern Yemen:
  • 92% of surveyed families do not know where their next meal will come from.
  • 95% rely on unstable, informal daily wage labor.
  • 84% cannot cover basic school-related expenses.
  • Nearly one in five recorded school dropouts was directly tied to child labor.
• Long-Term Impact: Education experts and local officials emphasize that the surge in dropouts is an economic byproduct of the war rather than an issue that can be solved within classrooms alone. Prolonged absences from education threaten to entrench cycles of child labor, illiteracy, and systemic poverty across generations in Yemen.