Attachments
INTRODUCTION
More than half of all refugee children in the world – 3.5 million – are not in school. People who were refugees at the end of 2015 have been in exile for an average duration of 10.3 years, meaning millions of children miss out on some – if not all – of their education.1 These children often face discrimination and exclusion as they seek to rebuild their futures far from home. As a result, refugee children are five times less likely to attend school than other children in the countries in which they are displaced. Only 61 per cent attend primary school, 22 per cent have access to secondary school and just one per cent join university. Girls are out of school at higher rates than boys.2 A child’s right to an education does not end in times of emergency and the world will not meet Sustainable Development Goal 4, unless efforts are made to reach those furthest behind – including refugees. Providing refugees with an opportunity to learn is the building block from humanitarian response to recovery, resilience and long-term development. During displacement the need for safe, quality and inclusive education – for hope for the future – is critical.
Refugee children and their families put a premium on education and ask for it to be prioritised. 86 per cent of the world’s refugees live in low – and middle – income countries whose education systems already struggle to meet the needs of the most marginalised. These countries need international support to scale up provision of local services and to provide alternative educational opportunities for refugees – sharing the global responsibility of large movements of refugees.
In the New York Declaration, all Member States committed to ‘ensure all children are receiving education within a few months of arrival, and we will prioritise budgetary provision to facilitate this, including support for host countries as required’. States promised to provide quality early childhood, primary and secondary education, as well as accelerated learning, tertiary and vocational education.
While some elements of the first draft of the Programme of Action provide an important starting point, we strongly urge UN Member States to seize this unique opportunity to agree on action that facilitates cooperation to deliver specific results, as committed to in the New York Declaration.
Building on the first draft, this document sets out our recommendations for meaningful measures which would form the basis of a Programme of Action to close the refugee education gap.