The need for a harmonised approach to refugee education

Providing a quality education to refugees, internally displaced people (IDPs) and deprived local communities is considered a fundamental way of empowering them and improving their social inclusion. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has repeatedly discussed the importance and benefits of ensuring the inclusion of refugees in national education systems with particular regard to the Syrian crisis and other refugees and immigration cases, as well as ways to achieve this.

The need to ensure a quality education has been also recognised in Jordan. Human Rights Watch stated in 2017 that “Syrian refugee children in Jordan face a bleak educational present” and UNICEF highlighted that lots of refugees in Jordan have completely “missed out on learning”.

It is not always possible to pursue international organisational objectives through classical formal education due to a lack of teaching quality, a lack of available school spaces for all young people and insufficient capacity of local national educational systems which are coming under pressure from refugees and IDPs.

For this reason it is crucial to enhance and improve non-traditional paths through the enhancement of teaching methods and quality and teacher preparation. Informal education can in this sense overcome some of the barriers between young people and education.

All these barriers are combining to create a lost generation and are not providing the skills people aged between 12 and 18 need to access higher education in Lebanon, Jordan or Iraq and will prove an obstacle even when they eventually return to Syria.

Despite continuous efforts, the number of refugee students having access to higher education institutions in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq is limited. This is obviously because of the precarious situation in which they live, but it is also related (if we have a look at the specific case of Syrian refugees) to some very clear weaknesses (English language knowledge, for example).

As revealed during a meeting at the American University of Beirut and reported by Hana Addam El-Ghali, education and youth expert at the university: “Secondary school enrolment is low globally in refugee populations and therefore literacy and numeracy will not be strong. Also 20% of Syrian girls in Lebanon under the age 18 years are married.”

This combination of a lack of preparation and a precarious social situation prevents the majority of young refugees from having access to higher education systems.

Together with the lack of education paths for refugees, local teachers are in need of specific support in order to answer specific and unprecedented challenges and to promote comprehensive education, including not only training in the classic curricula but also soft skills and vocational training skills, as well as the ability to teach the life skills refugees need to face the daily problems they encounter.

The long-term impact of war

Moreover, with particular reference to the Syrian crisis, we are now entering the seventh year of war. There are now entire generations waiting to receive education in the age range between 12 and 18. Local primary and secondary schools have not got enough space to provide education for all these young people.

If we consider the Lebanese case, a population of four million is dealing with the presence of around one million Syrian refugees. According to UNHCR, in Lebanon, over 50% of Syrian refugees are children and they are spending their entire childhood away from their home country.

According to UNICEF’s Middle East and North Africa offices, 2.6 million Syrian people are displaced in Iraq, half of whom are children. The lives of refugees have deeply changed in seven years and it is not anticipated that they will return home very soon.

In this sense local hosting communities are subject to two types of pressure: a lack of infrastructure for accepting and providing education to the new ‘refugees’ in the age group between 12 and 18, plus a series of qualified adult refugees who need to be retrained in order to find new jobs and to be ready for new market conditions.

Providing non-formal education to refugees and deprived communities can also reduce levels of violence against them.

As noted in a paper published by UN Women on the specific situation of Jordan, there is a need to develop social and economic programmes for out-of-school girls, including non-formal education programmes to reduce the likelihood of early marriage, while also providing opportunities that encourage empowerment and self-reliance.

Local higher education institutions can help to improve the quality of teaching they receive, can play a major role in easing social tensions and can offer an open space in which to educate young people. By being directly engaged in these actions, local higher education institutions will promote education as a human right and will fight against the impoverishment and alienation of entire communities to the benefit of both local communities and refugees.

To this end the ministry of higher education in Lebanon has already begun work through the project Reaching All Children with Education (RACE), which is regarded as an example of best practice in this area. At the same time projects such as HOPES – Higher and Further Education Opportunities and Perspectives for Syrians – recently launched a call for proposals from local higher education institutions for small projects that can increase the impact of tertiary education in local societies.

The third mission of higher education is social and economic growth and this is vital for the Middle East region. To achieve it, higher education institutions must guarantee harmonised educational paths for refugees, IDPs and locally deprived communities.

Marco Di Donato has been international projects manager of the Mediterranean Universities Union, UNIMED, since 2015. He also teaches at the University of Trento in Italy where he is professor of history of Islamic countries and Islamic thought.