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Escalating conflicts intensify large-scale forced displacement
he West and Central Africa (WCA) region currently hosts over 13 million persons of concern to UNHCR, including 1.6 million refugees and 7.6 million internally displaced people. The region counts 5.5 million forcibly displaced children (refugees and IDPs).
The main conflicts affecting the region – in central Sahel, the Central African Republic, the Lake Chad Basin and North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon – show no signs of abating and continue driving up humanitarian needs while humanitarian access remains a recurring challenge.
During the past year, improving the protection environment for all displaced populations was a top operational priority, including child protection; prevention of gender-based violence and assistance to survivors; education and livelihoods; and strengthening community-based protection systems to reinforce self-reliance and social cohesion. Despite this, the number of children in need of humanitarian assistance has multiplied, as has the share of unmet needs.
57 million children, adolescents and youth are barred from attending school in the region, representing a quarter of the 236 million out-of-school worldwide2. This figure is all the more alarming when considering that it is twice the region’s share of the global population of children of the corresponding age (6 to 18 years old – 12.05 per cent). In Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger more than half of all children and adolescents do not have access to education.
Many countries in the region are facing increased insecurity, with cross-border spillover of conflicts and intercommunal violence having a major impact on the protection of children and youth, including on their access to education and vocational training. By the end of the 2021-2022 school year, over 12.400 schools were closed in eight countries of the region, either because they are a direct target of attacks by Non-State Armed Groups (NSAGs) or because teachers have fled leaving no-one to teach, or because parents are too frightened to send their children to school or are themselves in a process of repeated forced displacement to safer areas4. The spread and intensification of conflict is having an increasingly devastating effect on access and continuity of learning for all children, and particularly for forcibly displaced children.
When they do have access to education, refugee children often learn in overcrowded and under- resourced environments (lack of infrastructure, learning materials, sanitation facilities, etc.). Data on teachers is fragmentary but shows that teacher/pupil ratios in refugee-hosting schools are well above recommended ratios, which has a negative impact on both teaching and learning experiences. In addition, the refugee or community teachers who make up most of the workforce in these schools are often inadequately supported, trained and paid. There are few opportunities for them to gain recognition of qualifications obtained in their country of origin and/or to access national qualifications that would allow them to be included in the national education system of their asylum country.
The further refugees progress through the education system, the higher the barriers become, as evidenced by the significant drop in enrolment rates between primary and secondary and between secondary and tertiary education (see next page).