From State to System Failure: A Longitudinal Analysis of Education in Conflict-Affected Yemen (2015-2023)

The protracted conflict in Yemen, entering its tenth year in 2025, has catalyzed one of the world's most severe humanitarian and educational crises. This study employs a longitudinal analysis of key educational indicators from 2015 to 2023, drawing on data from UNICEF, the Yemen Education Cluster, and the World Bank. Moving beyond a mere accounting of decline, we argue that the available data itself serves as a powerful indicator of state collapse. The systematic erosion of national-level educational statistics mirrors the disintegration of government capacity, forcing a reliance on fragmented humanitarian snapshots that document interventions, not a national system. Our findings reveal a sector in profound disrepair: an estimated 4.5 million out-of-school children, widespread destruction of school infrastructure necessitating temporary learning spaces, and the complete dependence of the teaching workforce on externally-funded incentives rather than state salaries. The data consistently shows entrenched gender disparities, exacerbated by negative coping mechanisms like child labor and marriage. This paper concludes that the Yemeni education system has transitioned from a public good to a donor-dependent humanitarian service. The primary methodological finding is that the absence of comprehensive data is a direct consequence of conflict and a critical variable for analysis. We recommend that international policy shift from short-term emergency response to sustainable, locally-led system-building and that future research focus on the qualitative experiences within this collapsed educational landscape.