Summary
Two years after the Supporting Syria conference in London, where international donors and governments of host countries agreed to make sure that by the end of 2017 all 1.7 million Syrian school-aged children would be enrolled in school, more than 40% of all school-aged Syrian children living in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq still do not have access to education.
With increasing levels of poverty among refugee families in the region, the future looks more bleak with the day for the more than half a million of young Syrians who are out of school, who do not have any chance to work on their future, and with that on the future of their home country.
Despite commitments made in London to provide US$1.4 billion and additional pledges of the international community in Brussels a year later, alongside commitments from host countries to ensure access to quality education for all Syrian children, the international donors have failed to delivered their financial commitments and host countries maintain restrictive policies that keep children out of school.
This is resulting in a complex mix of problems, from which the region does not seem to be able to escape, unless a Marshall plan for the region is put in place:
• During the 2016 conference in London, the funding ask for education was $ 1.4 billion, of which, by the end of the year, only $ 618 million, less than 50%, was received. In October 2017, 57% of the overall humanitarian pledges made during the 2017 conference in Brussels for the timeframe 2018- 2020 was met. The United Nations and partners have requested $841 million for education in their Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan 2018 - 2019, of which $238 million (28%) was received in September 2017.
• Both donors and host governments are not able to provide transparent and reliable data on resources made available or received, which makes it extremely challenging to assess how much funding for education for refugee children and youth has reached the education system.
