Economic Hardship and War Force Millions of Yemeni Children Out of Classrooms and Into Child Labor

When the academic year commenced across government-controlled regions of Yemen on August 30, millions of school-aged children were conspicuously absent from morning assemblies and classrooms. Instead of carrying textbooks and backpacks, a growing segment of the nation’s youth has been driven onto streets, open fields, and informal job sites. A devastating combination of more than a decade of armed conflict, widespread displacement, and severe economic collapse has transformed basic education into an unattainable luxury for vulnerable families across the country.

On the outskirts of the city of Taiz, the daily reality of this educational crisis is embodied by 11-year-old Hasnaa Jaber. While other children in nearby neighborhoods prepare for mid-morning school breaks, Hasnaa spends her mornings navigating vacant agricultural fields to gather discarded plastic containers. Having completed her education only up to the third grade, she was forced to leave formal schooling alongside two of her older brothers to help keep her family afloat financially.

For Hasnaa, scavenging for recyclable plastic is grueling work that yields modest returns. By delivering the collected bottles to local scrap merchants, she manages to generate roughly 1,500 Yemeni rials—equivalent to about one U.S. dollar—per day. While minor in absolute terms, these earnings represent an indispensable lifeline for her impoverished household, which resides in an informal settlement established for families displaced by Yemen's protracted civil war.

Hasnaa’s plight is far from an isolated incident. According to estimates from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), an estimated 3.2 million children are currently excluded from education across Yemen. This staggering figure illustrates a dramatic worsening of the educational landscape since the war began in 2015, when the number of out-of-school children stood at 1.8 million. The steady rise underscores how persistent hostilities have steadily eroded the nation's social and institutional infrastructure.

The broader humanitarian emergency facing Yemen’s youth is further detailed by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). According to the Yemen Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan (HNRP), approximately 6.6 million children across the country are in urgent need of educational assistance. The scale of the need highlights how systemic deprivation continues to prevent millions of young people from exercising their fundamental right to learn.

Economic indicators published in humanitarian assessments reveal that financial paralysis is the primary driver pulling children out of school. An overwhelming 84 percent of surveyed families report being entirely unable to cover the essential costs associated with schooling, including learning materials, stationery, and books. Consequently, child labor has become directly tied to educational abandonment, with nearly one in every five dropout cases linked to children having to work to support their households.

Underlying this trend is severe food insecurity that affects nearly the entire vulnerable population. Humanitarian data shows that 92 percent of surveyed households live in constant uncertainty regarding where their next meal will come from, leaving them reliant on fragile, low-paying informal labor. Under such extreme pressure, the daily priority for parents inevitably shifts from intellectual development to immediate physical survival.

In Taiz, Hasnaa’s 35-year-old father, Jaber Ali, exemplifies the desperate trade-offs confronting parents. Having fled his hometown near Taiz eight years ago due to intense fighting, Jaber took shelter in an informal settlement and sought work washing cars. Deprived of an education during his own childhood, he had initially hoped to provide his children with the schooling he never had.

However, the acute deterioration of economic conditions over the past two years has shattered those hopes. With the cost of living climbing and daily earnings dwindling, the money Jaber generates from washing vehicles is no longer sufficient to secure even baseline food rations for his household. The additional expenses required for school supplies, books, and routine academic needs quickly became impossible to afford.

Confronted with these harsh realities, Jaber explained that he was presented with an agonizing choice: allow his children to remain in school while the family suffered from starvation, or pull them from classes so they could contribute to household income. For Jaber, providing essential nutrition had to take precedence over keeping his children enrolled, forcing him to solicit help from his young sons and daughter.

The burden of labor has reshaped the entire family dynamic. Among Jaber's five children, only one currently attends school—solely because that child is still too young to wash vehicles or forage through open fields for plastic containers. The older siblings, meanwhile, dedicate their days to informal labor alongside their father in an ongoing struggle to meet basic nutritional needs.

The separation from normal childhood routines has also taken an emotional and social toll on Hasnaa. She notes that she feels increasingly alienated from peers who still attend school, expressing that those who remain in classrooms often look down on children who have been forced to drop out. Instead, she finds comfort and companionship among other out-of-school youth who share the same economic hardships and social stigma.

Despite the bleak circumstances, Jaber attempts to preserve his children's morale by framing their withdrawal from school as a temporary pause rather than a permanent outcome. When Hasnaa and her brothers appealed to restart their classes this term, he promised them they would return once financial conditions eased, striving to keep their hopes alive rather than letting them believe their education is permanently lost.

For Hasnaa, that promise serves as a vital anchor amid daily hardship in Taiz. Refusing to abandon her aspirations, the 11-year-old maintains a steadfast desire to return to the classroom next year and eventually fulfill her ambition of becoming a teacher. Yet for Hasnaa and millions of other out-of-school Yemeni children, the path back to the classroom remains entirely dependent on economic relief in a nation still gripped by crisis.