Lebanese Youths Abandon Education as Crisis Bites

Lebanese Youths Abandon Education as Crisis Bites

Before Lebanon's devastating financial crisis struck, Faraj Faraj thought university could set him on a path out of a cramped family home in a poor area of Beirut and towards financial independence.

Instead, like increasing numbers of Lebanon's young people, soaring costs forced the 19-year-old to drop out of studying just over a year ago, before he had finished secondary school.

"I don't have family who can help me complete my education, and there's no work," he said, adding that even though he was at a state school, the cost of transport had become hard to bear.

UN research published in January showed that 30% of those aged 15-24 in Lebanon had dropped out of education. More young people are skipping meals and cutting back on health care, the survey showed.

Faraj, his parents, two unemployed brothers and two younger sisters who are still in school sleep between two rooms in a small apartment in Beirut's Borj Hammoud, a neighborhood with narrow, crowded streets that was damaged by a massive explosion at the city's port in 2020.

The coronavirus pandemic and the port blast, which still scars Beirut's seafront, deepened what the World Bank has described as one of the worst economic collapses since the