The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said on Friday that attacks on kindergartens and schools have been a sad reality for children in eastern Ukraine in the last eight years.

“Every day, they live, play, and go to and from school in areas littered with landmines, unexploded ordnances, and other deadly explosive remnants of war,” UNICEF said in a statement.

According to the agency, more than 750 schools have been damaged since the beginning of the conflict.

The UN agency said that attacks on schools – since fighting began in the eastern region between government forces and mostly pro-Russian separatists in 2014 – had been disrupting access to education for thousands of children on both sides of the contact line.

It said children in eastern Ukraine lived in one of the world’s most mine-contaminated stretches of land.

Highlighting that the conflict had taken a severe toll on the psychosocial wellbeing of an entire generation of children, UNICEF called on all parties to protect children and their caregivers from attacks.

“A child’s right to education cannot be safeguarded in conflict settings without education itself being protected,” UNICEF underlined.

According to recent data, for children living in conflict, education has become even more dangerous. In 2020, there were 535 verified attacks on schools, an increase of 17 per cent compared to 2019.

(NAN)