Ten Dollars A Week Can Keep A Refugee Child Off The Streets
Gordon Brown
Just
days ago, Abdul al-Kader, his four-year-old daughter, Abdelillah,
draped over his shoulders, was photographed standing at a dangerous
intersection in Beirut, trying to sell biro pens to feed his family. The
image of this Syrian refugee family’s plight, tweeted by a Norwegian,
Gissur Simonarson, immediately went viral.
Within
a day or two, £100,000 ($154,000) was raised to help Abdul, Abdelillah,
and her nine-year-old sister, Reem. When asked what he would do with
the money, Abdul said he would use it to educate his children and their
friends.
The
story of Abdul and his children highlights an obvious, if overlooked,
truth: Far from seeking to scrounge off Europe, thousands of Syrian
exiles are desperate to return home as soon as it is safe. It is sheer
desperation that is forcing them to embark on life-threatening voyages.
And they are not alone. An astonishing 30 million children are
displaced around the world: two-thirds to other parts of their
countries, and the rest forced to flee from their homelands altogether.
Some
refugees are victims of natural disasters – for example, the one
million children recently made homeless by the earthquake in Nepal.
Others are displaced by climate change. But the main reason for the
rising number of refugees is violent conflict. Five years ago, war and
fighting displaced roughly 5,000 children per day; today, that number
is more than 20,000.
Aside
from Afghanistan since the 1970s, Somalia since the 1980s, the
Democratic Republic of Congo since the 1990s, and now Syria, the past
year alone has seen refugees fleeing the Central African Republic, South
Sudan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Burundi. And, because the average time a
refugee is away from his or her homeland is ten years, millions of
refugee children could go without education for most of their childhood
years.
That
scenario – life on the streets, with some children trapped in
slave-labor conditions, others trafficked for prostitution or forced
into unwanted marriages, and all vulnerable to extremists who seek to
exploit their suffering – is so unacceptable that it forces us to act.
While food, medicine, and shelter come first, education must be a high
priority.
I
found that out a few weeks ago while visiting a refugee center in
Beirut, where mothers pleaded with me to get their children into school.
They understood that while nutrition and health care are vital to
survival, education – which enables young people to prepare and plan for
the future – is what gives them hope.
Yet,
despite the efforts of international agencies, these vulnerable
children will continue to fall through the cracks unless drastic action
is taken now. Refugee children lose out because they benefit mainly from
humanitarian aid, which maintains a short-term focus on shelter and
food, and development aid, which is by its very nature long-term. Only
2% of humanitarian aid currently goes to schools, and aid agencies
struggle to cope with emergencies.
To
address this, plans are underway for a humanitarian fund that can
provide money to keep schools operating through an emergency or to build
new ones in refugee camps and settlements. Indeed, the real test for
such a fund is in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, where
services are at a breaking point and some two million children – the
majority with no schooling – are languishing in shacks, tents, huts, and
squalid camps.
Turkey
has 621,000 Syrian child refugees and needs additional school capacity
for some 400,000. Lebanon has 510,000, with no room for 300,000. Jordan
has 350,000, and is 90,000 places short.
Last
week, the Global Business Coalition for Education and the charity
Theirworld outlined a way forward that is economical and can be implemented immediately.
The plan is simple: double shifts in existing schools, with local
children attending during the first half of the day, and refugee
children attending during the second half. The plan could ensure that
one million refugee children are not condemned to lose their chance at
an education.
Over the past year, thanks to international donors around the world and a determined education minister, Elias Bou Saab,
106,000 refugee children in Lebanon have been enrolled under a
double-shift system. Starting with the new autumn term, the total is set
to rise to 140,000.
But
the funding for this year is $30 million short – and 60,000 of the
students cannot be accommodated. And then there are the 300,000 children
in Lebanon alone whose education needs remain to be met.
Normally
in an emergency, there are no facilities, buildings, or staff to keep
children in school. What is missing in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey,
however, are not classrooms or trained teachers – there are plenty
locally and among adult Syrian refugees – but the money to pay for them.
The
sums are not large relative to the scale of the problem. For just over
$500 a year, or $10 per child per week, we can provide school places
that would allow parents and children to do what they would prefer to do
– be educated in the region.
Later
this month in New York, I will ask the international community – old
donors and potential new donors alike – to add another $250 million to
the $100 million that we have already raised for Lebanon. If an
impoverished refugee father is willing to give all he has to help
children go to school, surely $10 dollars a week is not too much for the
international community to offer to keep a refugee child off the
streets.
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