Seventeen-year-old Jana was preparing for the tawjihi, an examination that helps determine a student’s opportunities for university study. It was January 2026 and UNICEF found her trying to study inside a dark, cold tent. Her family had been displaced from northern Gaza, and rainwater regularly entered the shelter where she kept her notes and textbooks.
Jana was borrowing books from friends because purchasing them was too expensive. Protecting those borrowed books from water was part of her preparation. Food for the household came from a local soup kitchen. These conditions did not remove the importance of her examination; they made pursuing it considerably more difficult. UNICEF’s account records a young person trying to continue an ordinary educational ambition without many of the conditions education requires.
Jana spoke of wanting to make her family proud and to study safely. Her ambitions deserve to be understood separately from the damage to schools and classrooms, even though that damage shapes the available opportunities. UNICEF and its partners were operating temporary learning spaces, but the existence of a learning program does not automatically provide every displaced student with light, quiet, dry books or a stable home. Jana’s account makes those distinctions visible.