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40,160 Syrian children forced out of school due to UK aid cuts and now child labour, early marriage and conscription to armed groups will rise, says aid agency
Action For Humanity, the parent charity of Syria Relief, the UK’s leading Syria-focused NGO, has revealed in a report released today that 100,000 children will fall out of full-time education due to loss of funds to their school in Syria. As of April 30th, 40,160 of these children are out of school due to a loss of funding from the UK government, which the aid agency blames on the November 2021 decision to reduce the amount spent on overseas aid from 0.7% to 0.5%. In response to this, they are launching an Education Emergency campaign today, asking the public to fund the gaps left by the UK government.
In a report released today, entitled The Children Failed By The World: The impact of reduced donations and aid budget cuts on the 100,000+ Syrian children forced out of full-time education finds that:
·The amount of schools ran by Syria Relief/Action For Humanity has reduced from 157 to 24 in a space of less than 12 months
·The number could be as low as zero by August 2022
·Reduction in funding will mean the amount of children educated by the organisation will from 100,000 to 3,600 to, potentially, zero.
·There will be a close-to-immediate rise in child labour, child marriage, early pregnancies, child conscription to military and armed groups, child exploitation and child trafficking
·Parents are openly admitting to considering sending their children to work or forcing their girls into early marriages if they are unable to attend school
·The human capital of countless Syrian children will be severely impacted, significantly reducing the ability for the next generation of Syrians to be able to contribute to or lead the rebuilding of a post-conflict Syria
·Thousands of children who need psychosocial support for the trauma crisis that is impacting displaced Syrian children due to witnessing and experiencing the brutal conflict, will no longer receive any of the mental health support they need
·All parents, children and teachers surveyed are either “very worried” or “worried” by school closures
The organisation are calling on the UK government to immediately reverse the aid budget cuts and ringfence funding for Syria, in order to re-open the 133 schools that have had to close this month, for other governments to commit to funding the humanitarian response in Syria in full and are pleading with the public to donate to the education emergency campaign to try and keep as many Syrian children in school as possible.
The report's author, Jessica Adams, the Head of Communications for Syria Relief/Action For Humanity, says:
“We at Syria Relief/Action For Humanity are deeply concerned that, due to budget cuts and lack of international support, that hundreds of thousands of Syrian children are at risk of falling out of school. In less than 12 months, Syria Relief have gone from running 306 schools to 24 and it could be 0 by the end of year, leaving over 100,000 children out of education. 133 of these schools were indirectly funded by the UK government’s aid budget, through the Chemonics Manahel programme, which has benefited over 380,000 children in war-torn Syria since it began in 2018.
“This, to us, is the biggest example yet of the failure and destructiveness of the UK government’s decision to cut the UK aid budget from 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) to 0.5%. This was a political choice that we, and the children, parents and teachers of Syria, hope will desperately be reversed. This report is our plea to anyone in the UK government to think again and any donor to help fill the humanitarian gaps left by Syria becoming the world’s forgotten crisis.
“It is our belief that if the funds are not found to plug the gaps left by the UK government and other donors, a generation of children in Northern Syria will be out of school and this will lead to a close-to-immediate rise in child labour, child marriage, early pregnancies, child conscription to military and armed groups, child exploitation and child trafficking.
“We believe that the UK aid budget cuts and the struggle to gain awareness and sympathy of the plight of Syrian children, amid competing media stories – Ukraine, COVID-19 and Partygate – are to blame for the 100,000+ children who now face a childhood without an education. Whilst we fully support the international response to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, it is deeply unfair for aid in Ukraine to come at the expense of victims of other conflicts like children in Syria. We implore the UK government to increase its overseas aid budget back to 0.7% of GNI or the government will be forced to choose between Ukrainian or Syrian children. This reduced aid budget means a so-called “global Britain” is forcing itself to choose between helping people in Ukraine or Syria, Afghanistan or Yemen, Bangladesh or Sudan, Somalia or Libya.
“Cuts to the aid budgets of governments in the Global North, forces the poorest communities in the world to compete with each other. Syrian children should not be forced to compete with other children in order to get an education. This is not a gameshow. This is deciding who has a future. This is deciding between life or death.
“Around 30,000 children have been killed since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. Last year alone, nearly 900 children were killed or injured in Syria. According to No Lost Generation, 1.75 million children aged between 5 and 17 are out of school and a further 1.35 million are at risk of dropping out and more than half of teachers and education staff have left the education system. UNICEF say one in three schools inside Syria can no longer be used due to being destroyed, damaged or used for military purposes.
“The schools that are operational are often overcrowded, lacking in basic materials, electricity, water, heating and, in IDP camps, they are often just large tents. Life in Syria for children is tough. 22% of communities report child labour as frequently occurring, while 18% report child marriage as very common. 28% of families have withdrawn children from school to have them work, to take part in early marriage or to migrate due to lack of food.
“Many children are forced to scavenge in bombed out buildings for materials to sell and often come across unexploded bombs or mines which can kill or maim them. Close to 13,000 child casualties have been due to landmines, explosive remnants of war and unexploded ordnance since the start of the conflict. As well as the physical scars of the conflict, there are the mental scars. A report released last year by Syria Relief/Action For Humanity found that 100% of all IDPs in Idlib under the age of 18 that we surveyed have PTSD symptoms (compared to 60% of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon and Turkey). This suggests that growing up in a warzone causes severe damage to a child’s mental health.
“Up until June 2021, Syria Relief/Action For Humanity operated 306 schools inside Syria, which made us the largest non-governmental provider of education within the country. We were then reduced to 157 school due to funding cuts.
“One of the biggest donors to our education was the UK government through its overseas aid budget, which was the third biggest aid donor to Syria and funded 133of the schools we operated. However, the funding for these endedin May 2022. Due to other cuts in donations, we will be reduced to just 24 schools and, potentially, 0 by August 2022.
“The hope is that many of the 100,000 children who will be out of an education due to the budget cuts will be educated through local authorities. However, their resources are even more stretched than many NGOs and there is currently no feasible capacity for them to take in 40,000-100,000 children who will be out of education from the closure of Syria Relief/Action For Humanity’s schools alone – let alone the hundreds of thousands of additional children who will be out of education due to the closure of other NGO-ran schools.
“We call on the UK government to reverse this decision as soon as possible in order to stop a generation of children in war-torn Northern Syria falling out of education and into a life of further suffering, exploitation and to never have a childhood again.”
ENDS