In Yemen, Flight From Fighting Can Cost a Child the Classroom

What does a family give up when fleeing the fighting also means its children must help pay for survival? For 13-year-old Muneer Farie, the answer is not just his village in Yemen’s Taiz governorate. It is time in a classroom. The Guardian reports that he and his brother now sell socks and other inexpensive goods outside a displacement camp instead of studying. Their father, Ghaleb Farie, says he asked them to work because the family needs the money to get by. ¹

Muneer had hoped to become the first teacher in his farming family. Before they fled their village in al-Wazeyah district, he could hear explosions and gunfire from his classroom. Fighting drew close; the family left. His ambition has not been measured away by a humanitarian survey, but his days have changed: lessons have given way to market work. That is one family’s account, not proof that every displaced child has taken the same path. ¹

Renewed fighting between Houthi and government-side forces has driven families into camps in southwest Yemen. The International Organization for Migration’s latest available estimate, dated September 28, counts 145,308 people in 24,218 households displaced across eight governorates since the West Coast escalation began in June. A week earlier, its comparable count was 129,438 people in 21,573 households. The difference is 15,870 people and 2,645 households—more than a 12% rise in the person count in one week. ^{1 2}

Those boundaries matter. The September 28 total is not a count for Taiz alone, and it does not mean all 145,308 people fled during September. Nor can it tell us how many families are staying in Muneer’s camp. It does show that, as of the latest count, displacement across the affected governorates was still growing rather than giving way to a general return home. ²

Other figures describe earlier snapshots or different reporting windows. The Guardian reported a then-current 125,000 displaced people on September 17; that figure has been overtaken by the later IOM count. A separate September 25 estimate described nearly 130,000 people displaced over the preceding three weeks, including about 71,000 children. It measures a recent period, not the cumulative movement across eight governorates since June. Counting those 71,000 children as children who left school—or adding them to IOM’s total—would answer a question the figures were not designed to answer. ^{4 2 32}

As reported September 15, more than 137,000 school-aged children faced major disruption to their education amid the renewed fighting. That is evidence of a broad interruption, but not a verified tally of permanent dropouts or children newly entering work. In Taiz, some children have lost access to classes while others, like the Farie brothers, are described as working to help meet family needs. There is no established count of how many displaced children have begun working in this escalation. ^{28 1}

Yemen’s education crisis also predates the latest fighting. An April 2026 Yemen-wide report put the number of children out of school at 3.2 million. The precise operational definition behind that older estimate has not been independently established here. It must not be described as 3.2 million children newly removed from classrooms this month, or added to the September figure for children whose schooling has been disrupted. One number concerns a longstanding national problem; the other describes disruption amid renewed fighting. ^{26 30 28}

The pressure on families extends beyond whether a school is open. In Taiz, blocked roads have disrupted travel and trade and made basic goods more expensive, according to The Guardian’s reporting. For a household already living in a camp, that makes the need for immediate income harder to set aside. The available account does not quantify the particular closures, their duration or the price increases, so it cannot establish exactly how much those pressures contributed to Ghaleb Farie’s decision. What he does say is that his sons’ work is necessary for the family to survive. ¹

The figures establish the scale of movement and the reach of educational disruption. Muneer’s story shows something narrower and more immediate: when a family loses its home and needs cash, a child’s working day can replace a school day. Neither the numbers nor his experience tells us when that trade-off will end. ^{1 2 28}