By Bida Elly David
The National Minister of General Education and Instructions, Awut Deng Achuil said over 2 million disabled children in South Sudan are out of school.
Minister Awut made the statement yesterday while addressing the global campaign aimed at removing barriers that stands between millions of conflicts affected children, and improving quality education, especially to those with special needs.
The minister has appealed to donors and people of good will to extend their hands towards supporting such forgotten kids.
She said that according to statistical analysis, it was found out that girls and women with disability in South Sudan rated with the biggest number without access to education in the Country.
“South Sudan is currently facing challenge as over two million persons with disabilities are out of schools due to lack of funding and technical people specialized in training them. Statistically, the biggest number of persons with disabilities out of school are mostly young girls and women,” Awut said.
She stated that most children in South Sudan are faced with numbers of challenges due to lack of parental care, as a result of premature marriages and passive responsibility.
“Most children especially in South Sudan are faced by challenges particularly failure to get to school due to lack of parental care, early marriages and lack of responsibility by parents. Also, parents living at poverty level in most occasions face problems in sending their children to school since what they get is to place food on the table,” the minister stressed.
Minister Awut deng has pointed out that, factors such as death of biological parents to care for their offspring were major contributors to the suffering of these children.
She said it is not only South Sudan facing this tragedy, but over two Hundred and twenty-two Million children have been affected by various crisis globally where many have failed to get access to education.
“Over 222 million children globally are affected by crisis as conflicts range around us, climate change triggers armed conflicts and forced displacements and global pandemic continued to take over lives and keep children out of school,” Awut stated.
She however appealed for an emergency support for children with disability across South Sudan, and urged parents to critically prioritize education of their children.
“We need to support the children with special needs since they are part and partial of the society hindered by natural and environmental hazards. We need to educate, medicate and feed them with much care and attention,” she said.