New York: Europe and the Arabs
The UNICEF representative in Yemen, Peter Hawkins, reiterated that the allegations that UNICEF and UN partners are colluding to destroy education in the country are "baseless," explaining that the organization continues to work with the de facto authorities in Sana'a. Hawkins also warned that the presence of 4.5 million children out of school in Yemen is a "time bomb." According to the UN daily news bulletin, a copy of which we received this morning, Tuesday.

In a special interview with UN News, Hawkins stated that UNICEF is working primarily to rehabilitate schools in Yemen, where it has rehabilitated 1,116 schools, in addition to motivating 38,000 male and female teachers to go to schools and teach.
The UN official warned that the presence of 4.5 million Yemeni children out of school means that "within five to ten years, the next generation may be illiterate, may not know how to count, and have very few life skills and foundations, and this will be more and more problematic as the country moves to the next stage with a new generation." Despite the challenges, Hawkins praised the “incredible resilience” of Yemen’s children and the incredible dedication of families to education. “I saw children in schools that had no walls, schools that had water on the floor, and yet the children were sitting on the floor in that wet condition, but they wanted to study and learn,” he said.