(PMOI / MEK Iran): Young Girls are Neglected by the Regime’s Bill to Protect Children and Adolescents.

November 4, is the Iranian national day for primary and secondary school students. It marks the 1978 anti-monarchical protest by high school students at Tehran University when university guards began shooting at them; killing 60 and injuring hundreds more. So on this day, it’s important to look at the millions of Iranian students, mainly girls, who are being deprived of an education, which is their basic human right.

In 2019, it was predicted that 2 million Iranian students were out of school, but as with everything else, this has been made worse by the coronavirus pandemic. Over 142,800 people have now died from coronavirus, the National Council of Resistance of Iran’s (NCRI), and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran). Officials predict that 3.5-4 million students are now not in education because school is neither mandatory nor free, so poor families send their kids to work in order to put food on the table, especially during a pandemic that has further crippled the economy.

Of course, because of the regime trying to hide statistics that make them look bad, it’s hard to know how many of the approximately 15 million school-age children are actually missing from the classroom.

In 2018, the state-run salamatnews.com reported that at least 2 million Iranian children were not in school, while a 2015 parliamentary Research Center report estimated it to be 4 million. A 2016 report on illiterate children, covered by the state-run Mehrkhaneh website, said the true number was over 3.2 million children, but the problem is that the data collected was from 2006 and it’s a bit hard to make current projections based on numbers from a decade ago.

At the same time, there have been no improvements in education in Iran, with the Ministry of Education seeing budget cut after budget cut, which has led to teachers not being paid, so it’s not likely that more kids are being encouraged to come to school.

And, as with most things under a patriarchal power system like the regime, it is worse for women. In fact, Massoumeh Ebtekar, the deputy for Women and Family Affairs, said last year that the dropout rate for girls is four times greater than that of boys, but these figures come from before the coronavirus pandemic and are likely much worse now.

After all, 50% of all students were predicted to be out of school, even online school, in July because of living in rural areas or being impoverished, which prevents them from having access to the internet or being able to buy the computer equipment needed to conduct online learning.

Hossein Ali Shahriari, Head of the Health Commission, said on October 14 that “3.5 million students in Iran do not have access to smartphones or tablets”, while the spokesman for the Education Commission said that more than half of villages “not have access to the internet”.

Meanwhile, the state-run Alefba website estimated last year that out of a dozen children not in school, only one is identified, so the reality could be worse than even our worst predictions, with this estimation that 36 million children should be in school.

The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI / MEK Iran), is opposed to the regime’s oppression of women, including child marriage. The MEK and the NCRI,  Iranian Opposition offer a democratic alternative to the religious dictatorship, in which men and women can have equal representation in government.

Mrs. Maryam Rajavi the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran’s (NCRI): Iranian children are the hungriest, the most innocent, and the most oppressed sector of Iranian society. Their conditions are tantamount to organized crime by the mullahs’ religious dictatorship.

MEK Iran (follow them on Twitter and Facebook)

and People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran – MEK IRAN – YouTube