Edward Beigbeder, UNICEF’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, has warned of the risk of losing an entire generation in the besieged and devastated Gaza Strip, where the education system has entered a state of “collapse” after two years of war.
In a statement following his return from Gaza, Beigbeder said: “This is the third year without schools. If we do not begin a genuine transition for all children by February, we will enter a fourth year, and then we can truly speak of a lost generation.”
He explained that, following the ceasefire on 10 October, UNICEF and its education partners had managed to “return around one-sixth of the children who should be in school to temporary learning spaces.”
But this, he stressed, refers to learning, not education, as “85% of schools have been destroyed or rendered unusable,” while many of the remaining ones are being used as shelters for displaced families. Children and teachers alike face constant obstacles to movement due to ongoing displacement and military operations, while most teachers are preoccupied with securing food and water for their families.
“How can classrooms reused without cement?” Beigbeder asked. “We also need notebooks, books, tools, and basic stationery. Food is survival, but education is hope.”
He said he was deeply moved by what he described as the determination of Gaza’s people to “reorganise their lives, clear the rubble, reopen small shops, and try to restore a semblance of normal life.”
Yet he also expressed his “shock” at the scale of destruction: “It is hard to imagine that 80% of Gaza’s land has been almost completely levelled, leaving only small pockets of buildings here and there.”
According to official figures, 20,058 students have been killed and 31,139 injured since Israel’s assault on Gaza and the West Bank began on 7 October 2023.
The Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education reports that more than 19,910 students have been killed and 30,097 injured in Gaza alone, while in the West Bank, 148 students have been killed, 1,042 injured, and 846 detained.
The state of education in Gaza today epitomises one of the gravest humanitarian crises facing Palestinians. Education is no longer merely a neglected right. It has become a direct casualty of war. When children are deprived of schooling for consecutive years, the loss extends far beyond classrooms: it endangers their future and drains hope from an entire generation that should be the cornerstone of rebuilding.
What is happening in Gaza cannot be reduced to statistics of destruction or the number of victims. It is an assault on the very human right to hope. For when a child is deprived of books and classrooms, the future itself is taken away, and with it, the dream of a homeland capable of life and renewal.
