A story of displacement and deprivation of education

AbdulRazzaq Al-Azazi

From being excellent at school to being displaced and deprived of education. This is the ugly face of war, a major impact of which is depriving people of a fundamental human right; the right to education, that makes the future for the individual, the family, and society.

Twenty-year-old Ryan Salah was one of the most successful students at school. Since she was at primary school, she has always been achieving top grades. When she was just around the corner from the Secondary School Certificate Examination, the war broke out in Yemen. Consequently, she and her family fled abroad and was deprived of pursuing her education.

Her family is Sudanese. They came to Yemen in the 1980s as part of the educational aid offered to Yemen by Kuwait at that time. Her mother, Mona, was a teacher, who loved Yemen and her connection to society has been strengthened, and therefore she and her husband, Salah, decided to live the rest of their lives in Yemen.
They had children and had good relations with the Yemeni community. They never thought of leaving Yemen, but the war forced them to do so. They left with those who were evacuated from Yemen, leaving behind all their personal belongings and a life full of sweet memories.

Ryan did not know whether she would return to Yemen or not, but anyway she found herself in a new country and a new life, where she felt strange among her relatives with no friends and without a school and education.

She left her books, pens, notebooks, and high-grade examination papers on the table at her home in Yemen and moved to Sudan, where she displaced with her family.

Since she has left Yemen, Rayan's life turned upside down. In spite of her passion for education and the high grades of the monthly exams and the first-semester final exam she had at school in Yemen, she could not persue her university education in Sudan like other girls of her age because she had not finished secondary school.

Therefore, after she had arrived at Sudan, she did the Secondary School Certificate Examination at the Yemeni embassy there and gained a high score. But she was unable to pursue university education because she could not afford the high tuition fees that foreign students must pay to attend Sudanese universities.