26% of Tunisian children live below poverty line

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Tunisia - 26% of Tunisian children live below the poverty line, President of the Tunisian Association for the Rights of the Child Moez Chérif said on Monday.

At a press conference held in Tunis on «The Crisis of Education in Tunisia,» Chérif underlined that Tunisian children are currently facing an unprecedented crisis.

Their yearly school results clearly show regional disparities, he pointed out, adding that school failure always affects the same regions located in the northwest and the southwest of the country.

He explained that official figures in Tunisia reveal that out of 100 children enrolled in the first year, only 50 of them make it to the last year of high school (baccalaureate) and only 25% of them access colleges and universities.

In addition, 70% of pupils are not good at mathematics, and 30% of them do not master reading or writing. Chérif reiterated that Tunisian children are the country's national project. On the other hand, he criticised the government's failure to address this problem.

He also warned against the lack of a vision for Tunisia's future children, their training as well as the mechanisms necessary to supervise them, reiterating that the current situation will have negative repercussions on the structure of society in the future, especially at a time when the world is experiencing several changes.

Chérif affirmed that the association supports teachers' social rights "yet this must in no way affect the rights of pupils to education and evaluation," he said. He called on civil society activists to mobilise to guarantee this right.