The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) announced that 244 million children are out of school in the world, a number that has been in continuous decline for more than 20 years, but it is still worrying.
"No one can accept this situation. Education is a right and we must do everything in our power to ensure that this right is respected for every child," UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement issued on Thursday.
Of the 244 million out-of-school children aged 6-18, 98 million, making up 40% of the total, live in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Nigeria (20.2 million), Ethiopia (10.5) and the Republic of Democratic Republic of the Congo (5.9) and Kenya (1.8), according to UNESCO figures.
After the proportion of girls was higher than boys among out-of-school children in 2000 (+2.5% in primary schools and +3.9 in complementary and secondary schools), UNESCO noted that the disparity “reduced to zero” even if “there are still local differences.” .
By way of comparison, UNESCO recalled that more than 400 million children were not enrolled in school in 2000, praising the "progress" that has been made in this regard during the past two decades "even if the pace of this progress has slowed significantly in recent years".