The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is alarmed by the attacks on educational institutions in Idlib, Syria, UNICEF Representative for the Middle East and North Africa Juliet Tuma said.
“As UNICEF, we were able to confirm… attacks on educational institutions, including schools and kindergartens … which is obviously alarming,” she told Riyadh on the sidelines of the second International Humanitarian Forum.
This situation affects the education of about 200,000 children in the region, she said. “Obviously, this is a serious violation of children’s rights, because schools and educational institutions are inviolable places, they should not be attacked”, – Tuma added.
“What’s happening in Idlib is unprecedented. It’s an exodus of children who have been forced to flee to safer places… We’re talking about half a million children since December 1, 2019. More than half a million children have been forced to flee in three months”, – she stressed.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Turkey was unable to fulfill several key obligations to solve the problems around Syrian Idlib. In particular, it did not disassociate the armed opposition, which is ready for a dialogue with the government within the political process, from terrorists. For his part, the Vice-President of Turkey, Fouat Oktay, made a statement that the country has fulfilled its commitments to Idlib.
In accordance with the agreement reached at the May 2017 talks in Astana (now Nur-Sultan) by representatives of Russia, Iran and Turkey, four de-escalation zones were created in Syria. The territory of three of these zones was taken over by Damascus in 2018. The fourth zone, located in the province of Idlib and parts of the neighbouring provinces of Latakia, Hama and Aleppo, remains outside the government’s control. However, most of it was captured by terrorists from the Jabhat al-Nusra group. In September 2018, Russia and Turkey agreed in Sochi to establish a demilitarized zone in Idlib, where more than a dozen different formations are located.