The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and UNICEF have issued a joint report and statement calling for international donations to fund the expansion of national educational systems in Middle Eastern countries hosting Iraqi refugee children.
In a statement, the US State Department has said "The United States expects to contribute generously" to the appeal.
While there is "no accurate count" of school-age Iraqi children that have fled Iraq, the UN agencies write, estimates suggest that "nearly half" of the approximately two million Iraqis displaced outside the country are children, of whom around 500,000 are of school age.
"Without a swift, robust and effective response from the international community to support the host countries in providing education opportunities for Iraqi children, the dangers related to the emergence of an uneducated and alienated young generation of Iraqis will become real," UNHCR and UNICEF write in the joint appeal, adding:
Many Iraqi children in the Syrian Arab Republic, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon are struggling to learn in over-crowded classrooms. Female headed households are seriously at risk with their children, who are often out of school, sitting in cramped apartments or forced to live in the streets, and are exposed to potential abuse and far-reaching alienation and manipulation. As host governments do not have the resources to meet the educational needs of the increasing numbers of Iraqi youth, UNHCR and UNICEF believe that the international community must provide substantive support to the concerned countries with the aim to offer much needed education to desperate Iraqi children.
Syria and Jordan host the brunt of the Iraqi refugee population, with sizable Iraqi populations also taking up residence in Lebanon, Egypt, as well as other regional countries.
Although Syrian policy is to provide free education to all Arab citizens living in its borders, in practice only a fraction of the estimated 300,000 school-age Iraqi children living in Syria are receiving education. In areas where Iraqi refugees are concentrated, the Syrian educational infrastructure has been swamped, and only 32,000 Iraqi children are enrolled in Syrian schools.
In Jordan, the government estimates 19,000 Iraqi children are enrolled in schools, and the ministry of education has committed with the UN agencies to the goal of fully enrolling the remaining 50,000 children.
Interestingly, while it applauds the Jordanian government for a recent agreement to provide education to all Iraqi refuge children in US-allied Jordan, the State Department’s statement does not mention the long-standing Syrian commitment to provide education to all Arab citizens, including Iraqis, even though the Syrian educational system is coping with a far larger estimated influx of Iraqi refugee children.
Syria has set the goal of enrolling another 100,000 Iraqi schoolchildren in the coming year, according to the UN agencies.
The program aims to increase capacity in the national education systems to enroll Iraqi children, and eschews the idea of creating a parallel educational system for Iraqi refugees.
The joint appeal program targets primary, secondary, and vocational training, along with “a number of higher education opportunies,” depending on “absorption capacity” of universities in the host countries.
In addition to swamped infrastructure, the UN agencies cites a litany of other issues facing displaced Iraqi students, including unstable living conditions; lack of resources to purchase uniforms and supplies; families sending children to work rather than school to cope with the economic realities of refugee life; psychological trauma in children who have fled a conflict zone; lack of school documentation for families forced to leave under duress; the uncertain residency status of many displaced Iraqi families; and families simply not knowing that they could send their children to school in the host countries.
“Children with special needs face enormous challenges, as their families do not have sufficient resources to send them to schools with the required facilities,” the two agencies write.
Some families have also found the curriculum or placement of their children inappropriate or discouraging, leading to students dropping out.
The full UNHCR/UNICEF report and joint appeal, including a breakdown of the budget for the project, can be accessed here: UNHCR_UNICEF_ed_appeal_07_07.pdf.
See IraqSlogger’s full coverage of refugee issues here.
