A Theirworld report by Kevin Watkins
Executive Summary
The Syria conflict has given rise to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. Some 4.8 million people have fled the country as refugees.
Another 6.6 million are displaced in Syria. The country’s civilian population has been subjected to widespread and systematic violations of human rights. Meeting at the London Conference on Supporting Syria and the Region in February 2016, the international community recognised that current efforts to support Syria’s displaced population and refugees in neighbouring countries were falling far short of the minimum levels required. Pledges in excess of US$12bn were announced. Those pledges have not been honoured. The gap between pledge and delivery is hurting Syria’s children.
Nowhere is the gap between pledge and delivery more damaging than in education.
The international community has repeatedly undertaken to ensure there will be ‘no lost generation’ of young Syrians denied an education. Yet almost six years into the conflict, the education system in Syria is in freefall – and a generation is being lost. Minimal support is reaching the parents, teachers and community groups striving to deliver education in Syria itself. The plight of Syrian refugee children in neighbouring states, the subject of this report, remains dire. Almost 1 million of these children are out of school – and many of those in school are at risk of dropping out. These children are at immediate risk of falling into child labour, early marriage and recruitment by extremist groups. Restricted access to education is also a powerful driver of migration. Like parents across the world, Syrian parents see education as a pathway to opportunity and a better future for their children. Unsurprisingly, many refugee parents undertaking the hazardous journey to Europe cite the search for education as a major factor behind their move. The bottom line is that Syria’s refugee children have suffered enough. Having escaped the horrors of war in Syria, they should not have to sacrifice their education – and they have a right to expect the international community’s best effort.
The London Conference is in danger of following a lengthy list of summits that have promised much but delivered little.
The London Conference included a pledge to ensure that all Syrian refugee children are in education by the end of the 2016/2017 school year. With a sustained effort on the part of host governments and the international community that goal is achievable. However, as the start of the 2016/2017 school year approaches, the window of opportunity is closing – and the international community has yet to act on its part of the education pact. Having recognised at the London Conference that at least US$1.4bn in additional funding is required, real financial disbursements have yet to materialise. Even the modest humanitarian appeal for education provision is heavily under-funded: as of mid-year 2016 only 39 per cent had been received. The aftermath of the London Conference has followed a wider pattern since the creation in 2013 of the No Lost Generation partnership between UN agencies, donors and the World Bank. Since then, there have been some notable advances in provision for Syrian refugee education, principally as a result of the efforts of host country governments. The record of the wider international community is at best chequered. There has been no shortage of encouraging summit communiques – but communiques do not put children in classrooms.
There is some cause for optimism over prospects for achieving education for all Syrian refugee children.
Syria’s three neighbouring countries with the largest out-of-school populations have all developed ambitious but achievable strategies for expanding access and improving the quality of provision. In each case, host governments recognise that the scale of the challenge is such that it can be met only by strengthening the overall education system while addressing the distinctive problems faced by refugee children.
Implementation of host government strategies will require sustained financial support on the part of the international community and full delivery on the US$1.4bn pledge.
That funding must be made available by the end of 2016 with upfront commitments provided by the start of the school year. Part of the problem with the London Conference pledge is that most donors have failed to meet even the most basic criteria for transparency, which makes it difficult to track delivery. While the headline number is large, opaque reporting systems obscure how much of the pledge represents new and additional finance, the time-period for delivery, and whether the spending will be channelled through projects or government programmes. Our best estimate is that less than US$400m has been tabled in the form of predictable, multi-year financing (of the type provided by DfID in Lebanon) for the next school year, leaving a funding gap of at least US$1bn. We stress this is a conservative estimate.
Donors must now deliver on the commitments made at the London summit, building on current initiatives.
The crisis in education provision for Syrian refugees is in part a symptom of wider failures in development finance. Neighbouring countries have been hit hard by the surge in refugee flows. Economic growth has slowed and pressure on public finances has increased. There is an urgent need for grant finance to fund refugee education and for highly concessional finance to support investments in school infrastructure and the wider education system. However, because the neighbouring states are middle-income countries they are not eligible for concessional loans from the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) and similar instruments operated by other institutions. Bilateral aid has also been limited. This has driven a dependence on unpredictable humanitarian aid appeals. The World Bank has now developed a Concessional Finance Facility (CFF) for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that holds out the prospect of longer-term financing for education at significant scale. The European Union is also equipped to play an expanded role in the region. However, the pool of bilateral donors in education for Syrian refugees is too small and the grant financing available is too shallow.
The crisis in education for Syrian refugees has turned the spotlight on wider failures in the international aid architecture.
Governments around the world have adopted a bold new set of international development targets for 2030. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include a commitment to universal secondary education. That target will be unattainable in the absence of new and additional financing for children losing out on education because of conflict and other humanitarian emergencies.
Over half of the estimated 65 million displaced people in the world are children.
From Syria to South Sudan and the Central African Republic, these children cannot access their right to education. Yet international funding and aid delivery to restore and rebuild their opportunities for learning is limited, slow-moving and based on annual appeals. The creation in 2016 of an Education Cannot Wait fund operating under the auspices of UNICEF but bringing together a wide range of agencies marked a recognition of the underlying problem. What is needed now is the funding – an estimated US$3.85bn over the next five years – to deliver results on the ground. The World Bank could also do more to respond to the development challenges posed by global displacement. With negotiations for IDA 18 replenishment (2017-2020) now underway, there is an opportunity to create a special financing mechanism for displaced people and refugees. There is a precedent for this in the IDA Crisis Response Window used to respond to the Ebola crisis in West Africa.
This report looks at the challenges facing two countries on the front-line of the global refugee crisis – Lebanon and Turkey.
Between them, these countries have some 732,000 children out of school aged 5-17. In both cases the level of need vastly outstrips the resources available. There are not enough teachers, schools or classrooms – and the education infrastructure that does exist is deteriorating. Refugee children face additional challenges in adapting to a new curriculum. Compounding these challenges, refugee poverty, insecurity and vulnerability create barriers of their own. While this report focuses on financing to deliver on the London Conference pledge, host governments also need to strengthen the reforms needed to deliver education to vulnerable refugees.
Proposals set out in this report will not solve the crisis in refugee education – but they would, if implemented, lead to fairer burden-sharing, extend hope, and create an enabling environment for delivering on the pledges made in the London Conference.