Photo: Mohammed al-Jabri/IRIN There are 45 girls per 100 boys enrolled in primary education, according to UNICEFSANAA, 1 September 2008 (IRIN) - Samia, aged 10, is one of the few girls in her village who attend school. "I like to learn. I like my school. I want to bring education to everyone here when I grow up," she says. The village of al-Quraiti, in al-Zaydia District of al-Hudeidah Governorate, western Yemen, is typical of many in rural Yemen, where women spend hours fetching water on donkeys and illiteracy rates are high. It is here that Samia attends Sumayah primary school. It has 60 girls in the first grade but only 15 in grade seven, indicating that many do not progress far. "To bring children into school is easy but keeping them in school is difficult," said Nasim Ur-Rehman, chief communications and information officer at the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Yemen. Hudeidah Governorate had 356,183 students in primary school in 2007. Of these, 148,919 were girls and the rest boys, according to the al-Hudeidah education office. In grade one, there were 40,202 boys and 34,051 girls, while in grade nine there were 9,924 boys against 6,649 girls, indicating a high dropout rate among girls. National campaign Photo: Mohammed al-Jabri/IRIN Samia is one of the few girls enrolled in a primary school in al-Hudeidah GovernorateUNICEF, in cooperation with the Education Ministry, has launched a several-week-long national campaign to promote girls' education - mobilising parents, community leaders, officials, religious leaders, the media and children themselves. Focusing on six of Yemen’s 21 governorates and the Island of Socotra, it aims to distribute campaign materials and use TV and radio to get its message across. "The national campaign comes at the most opportune time. Yemen suffers from low enrolment when it comes to primary education. The retention of children and completion of primary school is not very good," UNICEF's Ur-Rehman told IRIN. He said there was a hu...
