Every morning on Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake, a small gas-powered boat weaves between floating homes, collecting children in crisp uniforms who balance carefully as they board.

Among them is 13-year-old Sou Sreynich, who started school at 10 because her mother feared the journey across the vast freshwater lake was too dangerous.

Now, soaring fuel prices driven by the US-Israel war on Iran are making that trip – and her education – even more precarious. For families already on the edge, the conflict’s impact is less visible than COVID-19 school closures, but it is hitting the poorest first and hardest. Higher fuel costs are making it more expensive for children and teachers to reach school and for governments to fund education as budgets are squeezed.

On Tonle Sap, where most families survive on fishing and occasional casual work, everything already costs more because supplies must arrive by boat. Rising fuel prices mean Sreynich’s parents cannot always afford to travel to deeper, more plentiful fishing grounds. When money runs out, she skips school to gut fish or pick chilli peppers for extra income – absences she dreads.

The pressures extend far beyond Cambodia. A recent UNICEF report warns that if the war continues, up to 23.4 million more children could be pushed into poverty by the end of the year, about 80 percent of them in Africa and Asia. In Vietnam, two sisters, Ly, 16, and Nhi, 13, dropped out of school to work long hours in a Hanoi restaurant after their fisherman father lost his job when diesel became too expensive.

Aid groups warn that as families go into financial “triage”, some children stay in school while others are sent to work, leaving millions more vulnerable to exploitation, trafficking and hunger.