Fourteen years of conflict have generated death, destruction, mass flight, widespread conditions of poverty and despair, everywhere. The recent change of government has generated new waves of displacement both within the country and from outside, with hundreds of thousands of people returning home after years, to a country all to be rebuilt and with very few options for livelihoods.
More than 7 million people remain internally displaced, many living in overcrowded camps. More than 6 million, on the other hand, have fled their homes and are registered as refugees and asylum seekers in neighboring countries.
But the main victims are boys and girls. Whole generations born, raised without remembering or ever knowing what peace means, without knowing freedom and hope. More than 2.4 million boys and girls cannot go to school, because a school does not have one: either it no longer exists, because it has been destroyed, or it does not work because it is unsafe or teachers do not have the means to reach the classrooms. In this context, boys and girls with disabilities have even more obstacles to being able to learn.
Not going to school increases the risk of child labor, with many minors finding themselves having to work from a very young age in trades, manufacturing, or on assembly lines. For girls then there is also the danger of early marriage and pregnancy.
We need you to rebuild classrooms and schools, to bring back to the desks so many little boys and girls who have learned only what hunger, fear, and pain are.