Syria's lost generation: report

counts cost of collapse in education

system
Save the Children says school enrolment has fallen to 50% and is much lower in areas worst
affected by conflict; urgent international action is needed

Karim has not been to school in over two years. Instead he chops wood to help his family
survive.

Kareem Shaheen in Beirut-Monday 30 March 2015

I cant go to school as my family needs to eat so I work with my father and
my brother instead, the 11-year-old, who lives in a camp in
northern Syria near the Turkish border, told human rights workers. The axe
is very heavy.
In nearby Lebanon, in a makeshift camp in the agricultural hinterland of the
Bekaa Valley, not far from the town of Zahle, another boy chops wood

under the watchful eye of his grandmother. During harvest season, many of
the boys and girls in the camp will go to work at the nearby farms for as
little as $2 (1.30) a day, said Abu Mohammed, the camp warden.
Only 70 out of about 300 children here go to nearby tent schools run by a
local humanitarian agency, Beyond Association.
Karim, from Hama, and the Bekaa Valleys children are just a handful of
about 2.8 million Syrian children who are out of school, their childhood
scarred by years of conflict, discrimination and displacement, their
education replaced by months of toiling in the fields.
Enrolment rates in Syria have fallen to an average of 50%, down from the
prewar levels in which nearly all Syrian children went to school, according
to a new report by Save the Children shared exclusively with the Guardian.

11-year-old Karim, who lives and works in a camp for displaced people close
to the border with Turkey. Photograph: Khalil Ashawi/Save the Children
In areas such as like Aleppo which have been devastated by nearly three
years of war, enrolment is down to 6%, while half of all refugee children,
who number over a million, are out of school. Four out of five refugee

children in Lebanon, which hosts the largest number of refugees, do not

have access to school.
Those who do are mostly in Lebanese public schools or study in makeshift
tents near the informal camps that dot the Bekaa Valley, many skipping
classes to work in the fields and earn money for their families.
At least a quarter of schools in Syria have been damaged or destroyed,
occupied by displaced families or used for military purposes, according to
the report, which estimates that it would cost more than 2bn to repair
Syrias devastated education sector.
Experts and human rights officials have warned of a lost generation of
uneducated children in Syria, some of whom have been out of school since
shortly after the beginning of the uprising against the regime of Bashar alAssad.

A Syrian refugee walks with her children at the Zaatari refugee camp in
Mafraq, Jordan, near the border with Syria. Photograph: Muhammad
Hamed/Reuters
Now the Save the Children report has put a price tag on the lost
generations tribulations: Syrias postwar economy could lose up to 1.5bn

a year, or up to 5.4% of GDP, due to loss of future earnings caused by lack

of schooling.
The real costs are likely to be higher, since children who do not receive an
education are likely to rely to a greater extent on government assistance
and to have higher incidence of problems such as child mortality.
Save the Children estimates that Syrian children who did not complete
primary school are likely to earn 32% less money in their first job than
those who completed secondary school, and 56% less than those who
finished university.
The report argues that providing children with schooling during war helps
them avoid child labour, early marriage and recruitment by armed groups,
and can contribute to their mental resilience. The charity urges the
international community to provide $224m in funds that had been
earmarked by international organisations for education in Syria.
The reports release comes ahead of a major donor conference in Kuwait on
Tuesday. UN organisations and human rights groups hope that states will
pledge new funding for the region to deal with the refugee crisis, which has
contributed to bringing international asylum applications to a 22-year high.

Syrian refugee children undergo training in taekwondo at the Zaatari

refugee camp. Photograph: Muhammad Hamed/Reuters
There are nearly four million refugees outside Syria, mostly in Lebanon,
Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. In Lebanon, one out of every four residents
is a Syrian who fled the war.
Officials hope that donor countries will provide more help to the states
hosting the refugees, particularly Lebanon, which does not have formal
camps and where refugees live among the population.
Funding shortfalls last year led to a temporary suspension of food aid to
refugees, and even now UN agencies have limited aid to the neediest
among them, leaving many without basic subsistence.
Its the largest humanitarian tragedy of our time, Ninette Kelley, the UN
high commissioner for refugees representative to Lebanon, told the
Guardian earlier this month in an interview. We do not want the world to
forget that people are suffering here.
The UN has asked the international community for $2.9bn in funding for its
Syria response plan for 2015. Only 9% of that amount has been provided.

Wealthy donor countries must dig deeper into their pockets with pledge
commitments than they did last year failure to do so will have a
devastating effect on millions of civilians in Syria and its neighbouring
countries, Oxfam said in a statement ahead of the conference. The
number of people in need of assistance in Syria and beyond continues to
rise dramatically, while the funding to help them is not keeping up with that
need.
With inadequate aid funds, more people in need will have to resort to
desperate survival strategies such as child labour or early marriage, the
statement added.
Posted by Thavam