Official statistics suggest that nearly 30 percent of Kyrgyzstan's population of 5.5 million is made up of school-age children. RFE/RL Kyrgyz Service regional correspondent Sanzhar Eraliev spent time in southern Kyrgyzstan -- including Osh, Batken, and Jalal Abad -- photographing some of them, particularly some of the roughly 50,000 kids that UNICEF said aren't attending any of the country's 2,000 or so schools.
