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Unabated attacks on schools have left many Ukrainian school children without a safe space to learn - UNICEF
Many of Ukraine’s 6.7 million children between the ages of three and 18 will be missing out again on their education when the new school year starts later this week amid "relentless" Russian attacks on schools, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Tuesday.
“Attacks on schools have continued unabated throughout the war in Ukraine. Just last week, teachers were among casualties of an attack on a civilian area in the city of Romny. The attack ripped through a school where teachers were preparing lessons for the new academic year,” said Regina de Dominicis, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia when briefing reporters at the United Nations in Geneva.
For Ms. de Dominicis “the war in Ukraine has become a war on children, and yet when it ends, children and young people will be essential to the country’s recovery and future.”
“These senseless and reckless attacks have left many Ukrainian children deeply distressed and without a safe place to learn,” said UNICEF’s Regional Director. “Just one in three schoolchildren in Ukraine are learning in person full time. We know that three quarters of children of preschool age in frontline areas are not attending kindergarten.”
As a result, children in Ukraine are showing signs of widespread learning loss, UNICEF said. Russia's full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022, preceded by the COVID-19 pandemic, have left students facing a fourth year of disruption to education.
According to Regina de Dominicis, “more than 1,300 schools have been totally destroyed and there are others that have been heavily damaged and are therefore not ready to be reopened for the academic year.”
Latest survey data showed that up to 57 per cent of teachers reported a deterioration in students’ Ukrainian language abilities, up to 45 per cent reported a reduction in mathematics skills, and up to 52 per cent reported a decrease in foreign language abilities.
UNICEF also pointed out that more than half of the millions of children who have fled Ukraine are not enrolled in national education systems in their host countries at the beginning of this school year.
Among the refugees, pre-schoolers and secondary-age students are the most likely to miss out on their education. Language barriers, difficulty in accessing school, and overstretched education systems are among the reasons for low enrolment rates.
According to UNICEF, refugee children who are not enrolled in local schools are likely attempting to study online, either via the Ukrainian curriculum or through other distance learning platforms. Some of them may have completely abandoned their education.
Throughout the crisis, UNICEF has been supporting children’s mental health through counselling and psychosocial support, provides learning materials including those on mine safety, and rehabilitating school shelters.
“Our priority is the rehabilitation of school shelters from kindergarten to primary, exactly to fight against this bottleneck of security and safety," said Regina de Dominicis. She added that she had visited a number of such shelters and was "amazed" at how well they were organized. "The children know exactly that if there is a bomb alarm they need to quickly go down,” she said.
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STORY: Widespread learning loss for Ukraine’s children - UNICEF
DURATION (TRT): 1’48”
SOURCE: UNTV CH
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH, NATS
ASPECT RATIO: 16:9
DATELINE: 29 August 2023, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
FORMAT: HYBRID PRESS BRIEFING
- Exterior medium shot: UN flag alley, UN Geneva
- Wide shot: speakers behind podium, attendees and cameramen at the press conference, screens with speakers
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Regina de Dominicis, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia: “Attacks on schools have continued unabated throughout the war in Ukraine. Just last week, teacher were amongst casualties of an attack on a civilian area in the city of Romny. The attack ripped through a school where teachers were preparing lessons for the new academic year.”
- Medium shot: attendees and cameramen at the press conference, screen with speaker
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Regina de Dominicis, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia: “These senseless and reckless attacks have left many Ukrainian children deeply distressed and without a safe place to learn. Just one in three schoolchildren in Ukraine are learning in person full time. We know that three quarters of children of preschool age in frontline areas are not attending kindergarten.”
- Wide shot: attendees and camerawoman at the press conference, screens with speakers
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Regina de Dominicis, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia: “More than 1,300 schools have been totally destroyed and there are others that have been heavily damaged and are therefore not ready to be reopened for the academic year.”
- Medium shot: speakers behind podium, screen with speaker
- SOUNDBITE (English) – Regina de Dominicis, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia: “Our priority is the rehabilitation of school shelters from kindergarten to primary, exactly to fight against this bottleneck of security and safety. So, I visited myself a couple of them. Especially in kindergarten, I was amazed at how well they were organized. So the children know exactly that if there is a bomb alarm they need to quickly go down.”
- Wide shot: attendees and camerawoman at the press conference, screens with speakers
- Medium shot: camerawoman and cameraman at the press conference
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New data showing that rivers were at their lowest level for decades last year provides further evidence that the climate crisis is real and countries must act immediately to protect themselves from the increasing threat to communities and livelihoods, the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday.
The key findings from WMO’s State of Global Water Resources 2025 report covering the hydrological cycle and extreme events in the five-year period to last year:
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Highlighting the long-term decline in the Earth’s freshwater storage and glacier melt, WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo explained that the planet’s water reserves used to act as a planetary “savings account” that absorbed the occasional dry season, avoiding a water crisis. “One of the central stories of the 2025 report is what is happening to that savings account? And the simple answer is that we are depleting it,” she told journalists in Geneva.
Groundwater reserves are equally stretched and have been in decline since 2014, WMO’s report states, with nearly two-thirds of monitored wells worldwide showing levels lower than the historical norm and indicating a shift “further toward deficit…not recovery”.
“At the same time, we are seeing more water-related disasters,” Ms. Saulo said, while also stressing that the currently strengthening El Niño “will increase the risk of drought in some areas, and flooding in others”.
Glaciers disappearing
In 2025, for the fourth consecutive year, every major glaciated region on Earth lost ice mass, leading to short-term hazards including floods and long-term water insecurity, according to WMO.
Responding to a question about whether the changing global water cycle might have contributed to the deadly Nepal-China flooding disaster, Ms. Saulo explained that melting ice and rock was just one factor in the chain of events that ultimately sent a massive and deadly wall of water and debris downstream on 26 August, killing at least 1,367 people.
“You asked if it could happen again? Absolutely; the problem in this region is that there’s 63,700 glaciers at the last count,” she told a Press Conference in Geneva. “Even if you’re looking with remote sensing with satellites at these glaciers, you might see some faults, you might see some slight shifting, that does not mean necessarily catastrophic collapse. So, in order to plan for this, it’s very, very difficult. But the international community is looking very hard at ways in which we can bring people together to solve some of these monitoring issues.”
Data indicates that glaciers shrank between 2023 and 2025 with cumulative losses of 1,400 gigatonnes of water – or about one third of annual fresh water needs.
Every major glacier region on Earth lost ice for the fourth consecutive year.
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Narelle van der Wel, WMO’s Head of Cryosphere Monitoring, Predictions and Services, stressed that while some further glacier loss is unavoidable, the eventual scale of the decline is not predetermined.
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Preparing for moving baselines
The report does not attribute every observed change to climate change alone. WMO says pressure on water resources and natural variability also contribute.
Mr. Jenkinson said governments need to prepare for “moving baselines” as historical patterns become less reliable.
“The situation 30 years ago is not where we are today,” he said. Countries, he added, need to prepare “for those changes that have really already arrived”.
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