Silent Classrooms in Yemen’s Ongoing Conflict

School bells rarely ring on time in war-torn Yemen. Airstrikes, blockades, and a collapsing economy have left millions of children without consistent schooling. Buildings once filled with laughter now stand damaged or serve as shelters for displaced families. Lessons stop abruptly when fighting moves closer, and many schools have been destroyed outright.

Families struggle to survive amid spiraling food prices and shortages of medicine. Education slides down the priority list when a day’s wages barely cover bread. Children often work to help buy essentials—selling water on street corners or repairing shoes—while their peers elsewhere memorize multiplication tables. Girls are pulled out of class for early marriage, a desperate attempt to secure dowries or reduce the number of mouths to feed. Teachers face equally grim realities. Salaries go unpaid for months, forcing many to leave the profession. Those who stay must teach in overcrowded, poorly lit rooms without basic materials.

Electricity flickers or disappears altogether. Chalkboards are cracked, and textbooks are rare.

Aid agencies try to provide temporary classrooms and emergency supplies, but continued violence makes large-scale rebuilding impossible. Humanitarian convoys encounter checkpoints and shifting front lines, while the currency’s collapse inflates the price of even the simplest equipment.

For countless Yemeni children, the concept of a normal school day is a fading memory. Their future is defined not by lessons learned but by lessons lost, a stark reminder that education is often one of war’s earliest casualties.