New York – UN Special Envoy for Global Education, Mr Gordon Brown, says without education, Syria’s children will be a lost generation.
Brown, who briefed correspondents in New York on Tuesday via telephone link on the humanitarian situation and the Syria Pledging Conference, which will take place in London on Feb. 4, said amid the Syrian chaos of carnage, starvation and evacuation, there is a tiny glimmer of hope.
He spoke about the new plan to provide education for Syrian child refugees who fled to Lebanon.
Brown said that 400,000 children could be back in school in a matter of weeks if funding was raised for the project.
“The Lebanese government has declared that it has taken 207,000 Syrian refugee children off the streets and gave them places in their country’s public schools.
“Today, I am setting out a plan to extend the opportunity of education to one million refugee boys and girls across Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey during the course of 2016, with the ambition that by next year every refugee child will be offered a place in school.
“`A combination of generous European Union funding by development commissioner Johannes Hahn and contributions from both public and private sectors in the region itself, 250 million dollars has been raised.’’
The first instalment of the 750 million dollars, he said, was needed to deliver this bold initiative.
The former British Prime Minister said in the run-up to the UN pledging conference in London on Feb. 4,:“we are asking donors from public and private sectors to do more.
“There are good reasons why we must act now if Syria’s refugee children are not to become a lost generation.
“The average time out of a country for a refugee is well over a decade and, if we do nothing, thousands of refugee children may reach adulthood without ever enjoying even a first day at school.’’
The UN envoy said that as more and more girls and boys arrive from Syria on the streets of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, disturbing new statistics show rates of child marriage among refugee girls have doubled from 12 to 26 per cent.
He also said that child labour among out-of-school boys and girls was rapidly worsening.
“One recent survey estimates that a third of boys and girls displaced from their home country have become labourers, often working illegally in unsafe conditions.
“The conference can mark a breakthrough in the way we offer education in emergencies.
“ Currently, in every humanitarian crisis and conflict zone, schooling for refugees falls through the net, caught between humanitarian aid, which inevitably focuses on survival, and ordinary development aid which is allocated years in advance.
“As a result, 25 million of the world’s out-of-school children, almost half of all children denied schooling, are in conflict zones.
“Without help to continue education in emergencies there is no chance of ever reaching the goal of universal education.
“So there is now a widespread demand that when the world humanitarian summit meets in Istanbul in May a new funding platform specifically devoted to education in emergencies should be created.
“The two million child refugees from Syria are an urgent test case of whether the world can bring itself to act.
“With hundreds of existing schools ready to double-shift and thousands of exiled Syrian teachers available for work, all that is lacking today are the funds to keep the schools open.
“We have the tools. Please let us now complete the job,” he told reporters.
NAN reports that the leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Kuwait and the United Nations, are at the forefront of global efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to those displaced by the conflict.
The conference would bring together world leaders, NGOs and the international community to help the 13.5 million vulnerable and displaced people inside Syria, and the 4.2 million Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries.
At the conference they would raise significant new funding to meet the needs of all those affected by the Syria crisis within the country itself and by supporting neighbouring countries who have shown enormous generosity in hosting refugees to cope with the impact of the crisis.
They will also pledge to identify long term funding solutions, covering 2016 and subsequent years, address the longer term needs of those affected by the crisis by identifying ways to create jobs and provide education, offering all those that have been forced to flee their homes greater hope for the future.
NAN reports that the Syria Donors Conference will also pave the way for a broader discussion about how the international community responds to protracted crises, in advance of the UK, UN and World Bank High-Level Forum on Forced Displacement in Protracted Crises later in 2016 and the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May.
The UN says it believes that a political solution is necessary to bring the Syrian conflict to an end. (NAN)