Too many Syrian kids still aren’t getting an education in Lebanon, according to a Human Rights Watch report released today.
Some 250,000 refugee children are out of school in the country, creating an “immediate crisis” that’s threatening the future of an entire generation of Syrians.
The barriers to education for refugees in Lebanon are complex, the report states – and it’s not just down to the lack of effort by the Lebanese state. Although 200,000 places have been opened for refugees in the country’s schools over the last year, less than 150,000 actually attended. That’s partly because Syrians often are forced to place their kids in forced labour rather than sending them to school, or can’t afford education costs.
But the biggest reason, according to HRW, is Lebanon’s residency policy for Syrians. It requires Syrians over 15 to pay $200 a year to maintain their residency status, as well as signing an agreement not to work, or securing an expensive sponsor. Humanitarian agencies estimate that two thirds of Syrians haven’t been able to renew their status, and among young people over the age of 15 getting residency can be even harder. Lacking finances, the right papers, or fearing authorities, they aren’t able to get residency and as a result find it harder to get to school.
“It has an enormous impact on kids. The longer children are out of school the less likely they are to go back to school,” Bassam Khawaja told Al Bawaba. Children who’ve spent five years out of school, he added, start work, get married and are significantly older than children in the classes they’d join. “They don’t see themselves as being able to go back,” he said.
The impact of a lack of education on children also has an effect on the rest of society. Child labour, early marriage and social integration are all at stake as the years spent out of education mount up for hundreds of thousands of Syrians.
“Having Syrians in the situation where they’re living underground, where they can’t work, they can’t survive, they can’t send their children to school,” Khawaja continued. “It’s in no-one’s interests.”
