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RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AFP) The UN agency for Palestinian refugees yesterday launched a campaign to distribute 200,000 laptops to school children in the Hamasruled Gaza Strip, a spokesman said.

The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) plans to distribute half a million devices to

refugees across the Middle Eastby the end of 2012, spokesman Adnan Abu Hasna said.

“The campaign is beginning today in refugee schools in (the southern Gaza town of) Rafah, with the distribution of 2,200 laptops as part of a plan to distribute 200,000 laptops to our students in the Gaza Strip,” he said.

The plan calls for linking pupils and teachers via wireless Internet “so that the students can continue their studies during crises,” Abu Hasna added.

The programme is expected to cost more than $30 million and has received funding from US-based One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) and the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organisation, a UN official said on condition of anonymity.

At the official launch at an UNRWA primary school in Rafah, the schoolchildren beamed as they received the green and white laptops, which are designed to be durable and energy efficient.

Many said they looked forward to using the computers to chat with friends and play computer games.

Nicholas Negroponte, the chairman and founder of OLPC, said he did not expect the project to encounter any obstacles and that Israel’s President Shimon Peres had lent his personal support to it. Some 200 teachers at UNRWA-run schools have already been trained to incorporate the computers in their lessons, and UNRWA and OLPC are currently developing electronic textbooks for an entire primary school curriculum.

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