Shafaq News
Beneath smoke rising from burning waste on the outskirts ofNajaf, Abu Saif, a father of eleven, found a classroom board in the garbage oneafternoon and carried it home. That evening, he began teaching his children theArabic alphabet himself.
He still works the landfill every day, alongside several ofhis children. Faced with mounting expenses and an income that does not coverthem, he eventually encouraged his sons to leave school and contribute to thehousehold. "I advised my sons to stop studying so we could livebetter," he told Shafaq News. "Life is expensive, and ourresponsibilities are too many." Then, after a pause, "It hurts mewhen I think about them not finishing school. But our circumstances arestronger than us."
That image, a blackboard salvaged from garbage, a fatherteaching letters by hand, captures something that poverty statistics alonecannot. Across Najaf's landfill sites, children sort waste where they mightotherwise be sitting in classrooms, and the distance between those tworealities is not measured in kilometers.
Voices from the Landfill
Bassem, one of the boys working at the site, described themoment that stays with him longest. "The hardest part isn't the exhaustionor the dust," he told Shafaq News. "It's when I find schoolbookswhile searching through the garbage. I open them carefully and look at thewriting, but I quickly skip the pages without pictures because I don'tunderstand the words." After a brief pause, he added: "The picturestell me things the words can't."
His dream, he said, is simple. "I just want to sit in aquiet room and read a book."
Bassem insisted the work was never a choice. "My fathercan't carry all the burdens of life alone anymore. He avoids roads wherestudents walk to school because he doesn't want us to feel hurt when we seechildren our age going to class."
Jamal Mohsen's dream is equally ordinary. He wants to wakeup carrying a schoolbag instead of a sack of recyclable waste. "Educationis every child's dream if they want a better future and a decent life," hesaid. "Our work is hard, but it's honest. We collect materials from thegarbage that can still be used and sell them by weight."
What these children describe reflects a documented nationalcrisis by the UNICEF, which estimated in 2025 that nearly 47.8 percent of Iraqichildren continue to face multidimensional poverty, a measure that combinesfinancial hardship with limited access to education and other basic rights. Iraq's illiteracy rate reached around 15.6 percent in 2024, leaving reading andwriting beyond the reach of thousands of children outside the formal educationsystem. In its 2025 ranking, Global Finance placed Iraq 76th globally and ninthamong Arab states by wealth, estimating GDP based on purchasing power parityper capita at around 15,177 dollars.
Although Iraq officially recorded a decline in poverty ratesto around 17.5 percent in July 2025, families working in Najaf's landfills saylittle has changed in practice.
A Longer Road Back
Not everyone has given up. At 21, Hussein Jassim representsone of those rare attempts to return, though his path began far from thelandfill, on farmland outside Najaf, where daily life revolved aroundlivestock, irrigation canals, and seasonal agricultural work.
Hussein enrolled in school like other children in hisvillage, but repeated failures in fourth and fifth grade eventually pushed himout. For years, he worked in farming and raising animals before social mediaopened a different view of the future. Videos about urban work opportunitiesencouraged him to imagine another path. He began commuting to the city andeventually secured a job at a restaurant overlooking the Euphrates River, wherehis dedication earned the owner's trust.
"My dream was always to continue studying and becomesomeone useful to my country and my people, but life didn't go the way Iwanted," he told Shafaq News.
Work, he said, clarified rather than extinguished thatambition. "I feel the importance of reading and writing every time I meetworkers who cannot do either." He has since applied for externalexaminations in hopes of resuming his studies. All of his siblings completeduniversity and postgraduate degrees —something he speaks about with pride, notbitterness. "The road is still long."
Kazem Naji left school after fifth grade when his familycould no longer afford the associated costs. "My family needs money fordaily survival," he said. "But thank God, I can still read and write. I still dream of going back to school if our financial situationimproves."
In September 2025, Iraq's Ministry of Education announcedthat national campaigns had returned nearly 251,000 students to classrooms, afigure that reflects both the scale of the dropout crisis and the limits ofwhat official initiatives have so far reached.
What the Classroom Cannot Fix Alone
Adnan Abdul Khafaji, head of the Educational andPsychological Sciences Department at the University of Kufa's College ofEducation for Girls, attributed dropout rates to overlapping pressures:bullying inside schools, family instability, poor academic performance, andfinancial hardship that makes continued enrollment feel impossible. "Somestudents lose motivation because they cannot afford suitable clothes orparticipate in school activities," he told Shafaq News. "Others areinfluenced by peers who are disconnected from education altogether."
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Many parents ultimately push their children into laborbecause household income no longer covers basic needs, he added —a patternvisible across Najaf's landfill sites and, by extension, across much of Iraq.
Ahmed Al-Moussawi, director of the Literacy and AcceleratedEducation Department in Najaf's Education Directorate, pointed to ongoingefforts aimed at containing the crisis. Najaf currently operates 30 acceleratedlearning schools and 28 literacy centers serving hundreds of learners acrossdifferent age groups. "The literacy centers are open to anyone who wantsto continue learning," he said. "Some attendance is voluntary, whilecertain employees are required to enroll under administrative regulations."
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The gap between those initiatives and the landfill remainswide.
Among the waste and the discarded textbooks, Abu Saif stillcarries the image of that blackboard home with him. He knows the road hischildren are on. He taught them their letters anyway.
Written and edited by Shafaq News staff.
