UN: Millions of children unschooled

More than 12 million children in the Middle East are not being educated despite efforts to expand schooling, the UN children's agency UNICEF said on Wednesday.

The figure does not include children forced from school by the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Those would bring the total number of unschooled children in the region to 15 million, the agency said in a new report.

The report by UNICEF and UN cultural agency UNESCO's Institute for Statistics praised the "considerable resources and political capital" devoted to expanding education in the Middle East during the last decade.