{{The authorities in Somalia are launching a campaign to get one million more children into schools.}}<\/p>\n
The Go 2 School initiative started simultaneously in the capital Mogadishu and in the main cities of Somaliland and Puntland.<\/p>\n
It is being supported by the UN children’s agency, Unicef, at a cost of $117m (\u00a375m).<\/p>\n
After two decades of civil war, aid agencies say Somalia’s formal education system has almost completely collapsed.<\/p>\n
School enrolment rates are among the lowest in the world. Only four out 10 Somali children currently attend school.<\/p>\n
Girls are particularly badly affected. Only one in three are at schools in south and central Somalia, where the militant Islamist group Al-Shabab still controls many areas.<\/p>\n
{{‘Lost generations’}}<\/p>\n
Unicef says the project will give a quarter of young people currently out of education a chance to learn.<\/p>\n
“Education is the key to the future of Somalia,” Unicef’s Somalia Representative Sikander Khan said.<\/p>\n
In June the Somali prime minister, Abdi Farah Shirdon, promised that his government would give education the same priority as defence and security.<\/p>\n
“We have lost two generations of children to war,” Somalia’s Education Minister Maryam Qasim told media. “The Somali child cannot wait for another generation.”<\/p>\n
She said she was undeterred by the security threat from al-Shabab saying that education would prevent children joining the militant group.<\/p>\n
Al-Shabab was driven out of Mogadishu in August 2011 and other main towns after that but still carries out attacks and suicide bombings.<\/p>\n
President Mohamud took office a year ago in a UN-backed bid to end two decades of violence.<\/p>\n
BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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