While Congress debates whether and how to prevent use of chemical weapons in Syria, nearly two million Syrian children have been forced to drop out of school. That means 40% of children in grades 1 to 9 are no longer getting any education, setting them back for the rest of their lives. In particular, girls are suffering neglect.
About half those children are now living in rudimentary refugee camps in neighboring countries, which are struggling to organize schooling for them. These numbers from UNICEF, the global children’s agency, are all more shocking because Syria was on the verge of achieving universal primary education just before the start of its internal wars. Above all, girls got equal treatment with boys in education because of the regime’s secular and non-Islamic bias.
“Thirty months into the conflict, children are becoming increasingly afraid, angry and frustrated. The risk of a lost generation becomes more acute with each day that they are out of school,” UNICEF reported.
“Of UNICEF’s $470 million appeal for Syria and the region, education is least funded, with just $51 million received out of $161 million requested,” it lamented.
Education authorities are grappling with this monumental problem as schools open after the summer break in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. For instance, Lebanon’s entire school system can handle about 300,000 children but the government estimates there will be 550,000 school-age Syrian refugees by this yearend. So far in 2013, it has been able to cater to just 15% of refugee children in its formal or non-formal teaching systems.
Refugee camps in Jordan contain about 150,000 school-aged Syrian children but its schools can handle just one third. Attendance is low, even among registered students, especially among girls. For instance, there are about 30,000 school-aged children in Za’atari camp, but space for just 14,000.
Nine out of 10 Syrian refugee children in Iraq are out of school, while the northern Kurdish autonomous region has received 50,000 newly arrived children in recent weeks. Its education systems can cope with less than half.
Syrian children need extra help because of worsening violence inside Syria and language challenges outside it. They also suffer problems of access, security, poverty and discrimination by local communities.
Working with local authorities, UNICEF has begun a massive distribution of education and teaching materials. Campaigns are underway to recruit teachers and build prefabricated classrooms. Schools are also being set up in buses to reach children wherever they are.
The remedies though useful are pitifully small unless more Western funding arrives to help children to return to learning. But the problem will not be solved by throwing money at it since local governments are wary of setting up stable educational systems for the children, in case their parents decide to become permanent refugees.
That is likely if the current Syrian wars turn into a stalemate and continue for a long time as conflicts of attrition. The tenor of Congressional debates and President Barack Obama’s statements about limited strikes against President Bashar al Assad’s military capabilities seem to be moving towards this kind of Syria.
Meanwhile, the four million refugees and internally displaced people wait patiently to see what US Congress decides. At issue is whether degradation of Assad’s power by the US will worsen the internal wars or mitigate them and clear paths for negotiated peace.
Children both within and outside Syria have no say on these adult decisions, which will be based on great principles of State, credibility of bans on weapons of mass destruction and theories of order in the world. Their lives are likely to be interrupted for a long time, even if violence abates a little and many of them do not become collateral damage of war.