Paris, January 28 {No.98-16} - UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor has expresseddeep concern for the growing number of Iraqi children who no longer go toschool and are condemned to eke out a living on the streets.

"Iraqi children must be able to return to school. Their future, and that oftheir country, depends on it," he said after drawing attention to the factthat education is a human right.

According to the Iraqi education ministry, quoted by the media, more thanone million children of school age have dropped out of education. Thisfigure represents 20% of the total number of school children who should havebeen enrolled during the 1996-1997 school year. The share of Iraqi childrenattending school has fallen from 93%, before the invasion of Kuwait, tobelow 80%. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) theproblem of street children, notably in Baghdad and Mosul, has become "anincreasingly worrying phenomenon."

Here is the text of the Director-General's declaration:

"The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose 50th anniversary wecelebrate this year, stipulates in its 26th article that "everyone has theright to education" and that "education shall be directed to the fulldevelopment of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect forhuman rights and fundamental freedoms." Iraqi children, like all others, areentitled to benefit from an education and everything must be done so thatthey may exercise this right, rather than running the streets in the questof a subsistence.

"Iraqi children must be able to return to school. Their future, and that oftheir country, depends on it. When one child out of four suffers frommalnutrition, when hundreds of thousands of children are forced to drop outof school to support their families, when teachers themselves are reduced tolooking for sources of revenue other than their all too meagre salaries,society is mortgaging its own future. I address an appeal to theinternational community so that the children of this great country not beforced to choose between school and the street, so that they do not pay forthe mistakes made by adults."