'Lost generation': Millions of Ethiopian children deprived of school

"I don't know when I'll be able to go back to school," 14-year-old Desta said, one of millions of children in northern Ethiopia's Amhara region deprived of school.

Desta has not been in a classroom for nearly four months and now divides his time between farming duties and household chores at home — yet another silent casualty of the armed clashes in the country's restive north.

Until September, the teenager — whose name has been changed over security fears — walked the 10 kilometres or so to school from his village roughly 250 kilometres east of Bahir Dar, the regional capital.

But after fighting broke out in the area, Desta's father Tesfaye refused to send him to class.

"I don't want my son to risk his life by going to school," he told AFP by phone from the village.

Amhara is Ethiopia's second most populous region, home to some 23 million people, but has been roiled by conflict since April 2023.

The Fano "self-defence" militia took up arms against the state after authorities attempted to disarm them.

Although a state of emergency ended in June, Addis was forced to deploy troops in September, with the unrest continuing.

Federal authorities said last month that the humanitarian situation was "catastrophic".

The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that more than 4,000 schools have closed in the region due to the clashes and 300 others have been damaged.

Some children have been without formal education for years, rights groups say, because of the double-punch of the war in Tigray and Covid shuttering schools.

"When war rages, women and children are the most vulnerable, and this war has really affected children who can no longer go to school," said Yohannes Benti, head of the Ethiopian Teachers' Association, which has some 700,000 members nationally.

Of the seven million children who should have enrolled for the last school year in Amhara, only three million were able to do so, he said.

The impact was felt not just in the restive north, he added.

Millions of other children were deprived of schooling in Tigray and in Oromia, Ethiopia's most populous region.

"When you miss even one day of school, you already miss a lot, so imagine over several months, several years," he said, adding that the impact falls hardest on the youngest.