李京倫廷譯
War and upheaval across parts of the Middle East and North Africa in recent years have driven more than 13 million children from school - 40 percent of the affected area's school-age population, the United Nations said Wednesday.
A report by UNICEF, the U.N. Children's Fund, cast a sobering new light on the subtle long-term destructive consequences of violent conflicts that have convulsed a region encompassing all or portions of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon,Jordan, Turkey, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and the Palestinian territories, particularly Gaza.
聯合國2日指出，中東、北非部分區域近年的戰爭與動亂，已使超過1300萬兒童失學，是這區域學齡人口的40%。
聯合國兒童基金會發布的報告以新穎且發人深省的方式，讓人了解暴力衝突不易察覺的長期破壞性後果，這些暴力衝突使以下國家或地區的全部或部分動盪不安，包括：敘利亞、伊拉克、黎巴嫩、約旦、土耳其、葉門、利比亞、蘇丹與巴勒斯坦（尤其是加薩）。
In some countries - particularly Syria, which once had one of the world's highest literacy rates - many children who ordinarily would be third or fourth graders by now have rarely if ever been inside a classroom.
"Attacks on schools and education infrastructure - sometimes deliberate - are one key reason many children do not attend classes," UNICEF said in a summary of the report.
In Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya alone, it said, nearly 9,000 schools are out of use because they have been "damaged, destroyed, are being used to shelter displaced families or have been taken over by parties to the conflict."
在某些國家，許多兒童現在本該就讀小學三或四年級，卻絕少上學，在敘利亞情況尤甚，而敘利亞的識字率曾在全球名列前茅。
基金會在報告摘要中說：「學校與教育基礎設施被攻擊（有時出於蓄意）是許多兒童不上學的一大原因。」
摘要寫道，光是在敘利亞、伊拉克、葉門與利比亞，就有近9000間學校沒在開課，因為學校「受損、被毀、被當作流浪家庭的避難所，或被衝突中的某一方占據」。
Other reasons, the summary said, include "the fear that drives thousands of teachers to abandon their posts, or keeps parents from sending their children to school because of what might happen to them along the way - or at school itself."
Dr. Peter Salama, the UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said the report was based on calculations from the combined data for each individual population that have been compiled by the agency over the years.
摘要寫道，兒童失學的其他原因包括「數千名老師因害怕而放棄教職，父母因害怕孩子在上學途中或在學校裡遭遇不測，不讓孩子上學」。
基金會駐中東北非地區負責人薩拉瑪博士說，這分報告以基金會多年來彙編的各國人口資料，綜合計算而成。
"We've had country-specific numbers in the past, but not the aggregate of major trends in the region," Salama said in a telephone interview from Amman,Jordan. "For us, it's actually quite staggering when you aggregate the numbers across these countries."
Five or 10 years ago, he said, it was unusual to have even 10 percent ofthe school-age populations in the region out of school. "Now it's 40 percent,"he said.
"Their educational achievements are going to be quite low," he said. "These are the future professionals in these societies."
薩拉瑪在約旦首都安曼接受電話訪問時說：「我們早就有各國數據，但沒有這個區域重要趨勢的彙整資料。對我們而言，當你把這些國家的數據綜合起來，結果十分驚人。」他說，五或十年前在這區域就算只有10%學齡人口失學也很不尋常，「現在卻是40%」。
他說：「這些孩子的教育程度將會很低，他們原本會成為這些社會未來的專業人才。」
While death, mayhem, hunger and disease are among the most obvious risks to civilians in these conflict zones, the collapse in primary education is another compelling reason for families with young children to flee. This partly explains the increasing surge of migrants into Europe, Salama said.
"Seventy to 80 percent of asylum seekers have been from Syria," he said."It's not coincidental."In Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, where millions of Syrians have fled since the war in their homeland began in 2011, more than 700,000 refugee children are unable to attend school because the education systems in those countries cannot cope with the extra load, the report said.
對這些衝突地區居民而言，死亡、騷亂、飢餓與疾病是可能危害安全最明顯的幾個因素，除此之外，初等教育崩潰是讓有幼童的家庭逃亡的重要原因。薩拉瑪說，這可以部分解釋前往歐洲的移民為何暴增。
他說：「尋求庇護的人之中，70%到80%來自敘利亞，這不是巧合。」
報告指出，數百萬敘利亞人從2011年內戰爆發起逃到約旦、黎巴嫩和土耳其，在這三個國家，超過70萬難民小孩無法上學，因為當地教育體系無法容納多出來的學子。
Salama said the report highlighted what he called another alarming issue: If children are not in school, they are often working, and exploited in hazardous jobs.
A parallel trend, he said, is increased recruitment of children into military and paramilitary organizations.
"In the past there was child recruitment, but it tended to be older boys in noncombat roles," Salama said. "That has really changed in the last year or two."
He said, "We are on the verge of a lost generation of kids."
薩拉瑪說，這分報告凸顯了他所謂另一個警訊：如果兒童沒在上學，往往就在工作，並在危險的工作中受到剝削。他說，與兒童失學率高漲同時出現的趨勢是，被招募到軍中與半軍事組織的兒童增加了。
薩拉瑪說：「以前這些組織雖也招募兒童，但通常會招年紀較長的兒童，讓他們擔任非戰鬥職務，但最近一兩年，情況變了很多。我們即將有一整代小孩失學。」
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