Link: Yemen Complex Emergency Fact Sheet #7 Fiscal Year (FY) 2013

Posted by Nora Fyles, Yona Nestel and Koli Banik
A call to action to promote gender equality in education

7 May 2013: No country should be left behind in ensuring gender equality in education, reflect UNGEI’s Nora Fyles, Plan’s Yona Nestel and the Global Partnership for Education’s Koli Banik, following the recent global education summit.

HIGHLIGHTS

• The plight of migrants from the Horn of Africa has worsened, with 25,000 people stranded in Haradh.

• More than 200 schools have been rehabilitated by USAID and the Ministry of Education since 2011.

• Civil disobedience in Abyan has disrupted schooling with 12 schools reportedly attacked in March.

• Suspected cases of measles reported in Hajjah Governorate.

• 25,000 tons of food to be distributed to 900,000 people in Bani Mtar District of Sana'a Governorate.

A teacher points to clearly-drawn Arabic characters on a blackboard and the third-grade girls at Aisha School gleefully make the corresponding sounds. A few minutes later the room grows quieter as the girls focus to simultaneously pronounce and write the letter corresponding to its sound. At a nearby school, first-grade boys stumble over themselves to get to the blackboard in time to point at the character that matches the sound their teacher just pronounced.

Highlights:

• 1,036 of the most vulnerable and conflict affected children were given birth certificates during a rapid birth registration campaign in Aden Governorate, South Yemen.

• An additional 228 outpatient therapeutic care programmes (OTPs) have been opened so far in 2013 for the treatment of children with severe and moderate acute malnutrition, including 34 in Sa’ada, North Yemen.

• Over 22,675 people are being served by 7 new water pumping sets installed in Abyan and Lahj, South Yemen.

KEY DEVELOPMENTS

· The Republic of Yemen Government (RoYG) and representatives of various Yemeni political groups met on March 18 to begin National Dialogue talks. The six-month, U.N.-backed process seeks to address Yemen’s political rifts and facilitate both the creation of a new constitution and successful 2014 elections. Several pro-autonomy and pro-secessionist groups in southern Yemen have refused to participate in the process, while thousands of people continue to protest against the talks in the southern city of Aden.

Earlier this year, in the State of the Union address, President Obama called upon us to join the world in ending extreme poverty in the next two decades. It was an extraordinary moment, as the President set forth a vision for one of the greatest contributions to human progress in history.

Link: Yemen Complex Emergency Fact Sheet #5, Fiscal Year (FY) 2013

Ali Ibrahim Al-Moshki (author)

During the revolution, armed militias and government forces used hundreds of children’s schools as barracks and firing points. When the soldiers and militiamen left, the schools were left in complete disrepair, some destroyed entirely. Now, nearly two years later, 380 of those schools have been repaired.