Ensuring education for Syrian refugee children

The continuing conflict in Syria is taking a heavy toll on education, as thousands of Syrian families take their children out of school and flee across the border to seek refuge. Recognizing their needs, the United Nations and its humanitarian partners last week launched the Syria Regional Response Plan, one of whose aims is to ensure that refugee children can continue their schooling in host countries.

We highlighted the global impact of conflict on education – and the need to pay much more attention to the education needs of refugee children – in the 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report: The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education.

According to the Regional Response Plan, the ongoing crisis in Syria has left over 40,000 Syrians, many of whom are women and children, with no other option but to flee the country. The inter-agency response plan is led by UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, which estimates that it will need to support 100,000 refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq in the next six months.

That is not counting the internally displaced in Syria. While the rights of refugees are enshrined in the 1951 Refugee Convention, internally displaced people are not protected by such legally binding principles. Accurate numbers of displaced are difficult to ascertain, and it is reported to be difficult for agencies to reach them. Schools have closed and health centres have shut down or become too dangerous for families to reach. A separate appeal for the humanitarian needs inside Syria is expected in the near future from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Regional Response Plan, which allocates about 15% of sectorial aid to education, provides for agencies including UNICEF, UNESCO and Save the Children to rent and refurbish schools, train education personnel in dealing with the special needs of refugee children, supply equipment and cover tuition and textbook fees, among other expenses.

Without skills, no lasting spring for Arab youth

Arab countries must provide the right skills for their large youth population if the Arab Spring is to have lasting effects, according to the 2010/2011 Arab Knowledge Report, a collaboration between the United Nations Development Programme and the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, which was launched in Dubai last week.

The crucial role of skills in ensuring that young people can get decent jobs and better lives will be the theme of the 2012 EFA Global Monitoring Report, which we are currently preparing. This issue is particularly pressing in Arab countries, where 66% of the population is under the age of 25, according to the Arab Knowledge Report.

Their large youth population offers Arab countries a huge opportunity to develop and move towards more knowledge-based economies. However, as the Arab Knowledge Report argues, if the countries fail to provide these young people with the right skills to facilitate such development, the region will face great economic problems – including high levels of unemployment. As we wrote on this blog a year ago, education failures were deeply implicated in the Arab world’s political crisis.

BRIEFLY: In Nairobi, a focus on decent jobs and better lives

Since Thursday, young people from across the globe have been meeting with senior leaders from the UN, governments and civil society in Nairobi at the Youth 21 Building for Change conference. The gathering aims to find better ways of engaging youth as leaders and decision-makers in the UN system and more broadly. This weekend, discussions focus on how governments and young people can avoid a “lost generation” of youth excluded from decent jobs. We’re currently investigating these issues for the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, which will examine how skills development programmes can improve the opportunities of marginalized young people for decent jobs and better lives.

As the Youth 21 Report points out, “youth continue to be overrepresented among the world’s unemployed. In 2007, youth comprised only 25% of the working-age population but accounted for more than 40% of the unemployed.” Furthermore, for employed young people in developing countries, “informal, non-secure, and low-wage employment is the norm.”

Justice for children: Lubanga and Kony are only the tip of the iceberg

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

The widespread use of child soldiers – whose damaging effects on education we examined in the 2011 Global Monitoring Report  – came under the global spotlight for the second time in a week on Wednesday, when the International Criminal Court delivered its historic first verdict. Thomas Lubanga, a militia leader from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was found guilty of recruiting child soldiers.

A week ago, another rebel leader, Joseph Kony, hit the headlines as the Kony 2012 video spread around the Internet at record-breaking pace. Despite international efforts to bring him to justice – including the first arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, in 2005 – Kony continues to lead the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army. The group has been accused of abducting children and forcing them to fight, as well as numerous other human rights abuses, in northern Uganda, DRC and South Sudan.

As much as creating worldwide buzz, the Kony video has caused controversy (summarized here by The Guardian) about whether or not the organization behind the video, Invisible Children, had chosen the best way to target Kony. As the Yale University development expert Chris Blattman – an authority on the region’s conflicts – wrote in his blog post on the issue, “successful advocacy often tells a simple story; simple stories usually lead to simple solutions; and simple solutions can do more harm than help.”

What is certain is that perpetrators of crimes against children in situations of armed conflict should be brought to justice. The forced recruitment of children into armed forces involves grave human rights violations, not only because it denies them their right to education but also because the trauma involved with abduction and the problems of reintegration have far wider effects, as we found in the 2011 Global Monitoring Report, The hidden crisis: Armed conflict and education. Furthermore, many child soldiers are forcibly removed from classrooms, frightening children, teachers and parents, and resulting in some cases in school closure.

Rural women miss out on education — and decent jobs

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day on March 8, “Empower Rural Women,” sheds light on the struggle that many poor, rural women face in completing even the most basic education — a finding that is backed up by new data analysis by the Education for All Global Monitoring Report team.

This is true even for countries that have made strong progress in expanding access to primary education. In Kenya, for example, if you are rich your chances of getting at least four years of schooling are extremely high, whether you live in an urban or a rural area, and whether you are male or female. But if you are poor and live in a rural area, it’s a very different story, and even more so if you are female.

Percentage of Kenyan 17-22 year olds with less than four years of schooling, 2009

Of poor, rural females in Kenya aged 17 to 22, 36% have less than four years in school, compared with 14% of poor, rural males, according to updated analysis for the Deprivation and Marginalization in Education database, which will be released with the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report in September.

Over 70% of the world’s very poor live in rural areas, and the population of the developing world is still more rural than urban, according to the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development, suggesting that a large number of women face such discrimination.

The rural disadvantage is particularly strong in certain groups. Many pastoralist communities in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, for example, face extreme educational disadvantage. They often rely heavily on boys for tending cattle and girls for domestic duties, so education loses out. In the North Eastern Province of Kenya which is predominantly pastoralist, only 30% of boys and 20% of girls enrol in primary school, according to the 2010 Global Monitoring Report.

The struggle to learn skills in the city

UNICEF’s flagship annual report, launched today, focuses on the lives of marginalized children in urban areas. The State of the World’s Children 2012 finds that children in urban environments are often denied their right to education, leaving many without the skills they need to find a good job.

Almost half of the world’s children now live in urban areas, compared with only 27% in 1955. This rapid urbanization is a mixed blessing. Cities provide better schools and, on average, children in urban areas have better educational opportunities than those in rural areas. But some of the greatest disparities in children’s opportunities can also be found in cities, where children in slums and informal settlements, migrant children and children working on the streets rarely enjoy the benefits of good quality education.

The gaps between rich and poor in towns and cities can sometimes equal or exceed those in rural areas. In Benin and Venezuela, for example, the education gap between the richest and poorest 20% is greater in urban than in rural areas, the report says, basing its findings on the Deprivation and Marginalization in Education analysis in the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report.

In Venezuela, the richest boys and girls get about 12 years of schooling on average, whether they live in rural or urban areas. By contrast, the urban poor only reach 4 years of education, more than two years fewer than their rural counterparts. Gender disparities are also more evident among the urban poor, with females acquiring around four and a half years of schooling, on average, compared with just three years for males.

Listening to the voices of young people

No one feels more strongly than young people themselves the mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skills that they acquire in education systems. Or, for many, the skills they don’t get a chance to acquire: 74 million adolescents aren’t even enrolled at school.

That’s why we are currently listening to the voices of the young to prepare for the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report on skills development and the world of work.

Our Youth, Skills & Work blog has been online for several months now. This is a space where any young person from anywhere in the world can submit stories and opinions about the need for skills to get decent work. You can read their stories on the blog or watch our YouTube animation to learn more.

We recently launched an art contest, which invites young artists to express themselves creatively about these issues. The first prize is a trip to Paris, and the winner’s artwork will be featured in the report. We have produced flyers in English, Spanish and French that can be found in digital versions on our website. Please feel free to use them to spread the word through your networks!

 

Who is responsible for developing youth skills?

What role should the private sector play in developing the skills of young people? That’s one of the questions likely to come up at two international events on the theme of our upcoming 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report – how skills development can improve marginalized young people’s opportunities for decent jobs and better lives.

This week 400 business, government and NGO leaders from the Middle East and North Africa gathered in Amman, Jordan, for the event Youth@Work to discuss how to tackle the crisis of youth and the world of work. Young people from the region were actively involved as moderators, panellists and participants.

“Today, one in four young people living in the Middle East and North Africa can’t find jobs. That’s the highest youth unemployment rate in the world”, said Christy Macy of the International Youth Foundation, which hosted the event together with the Arab Urban Development Institute.

On Monday it is time for Breaking new ground: partnerships for more and better jobs for young people, an event organized in New York by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) that will provide the background for the 2012 Annual Ministerial Review on employment and decent work. You can contribute to the event by posting ideas and questions on Twitter using the #UN4Youth hashtag. You can also follow online video conversations on Monday from 10:30am local time.

Why school should speak your language

People whose mother tongue is different from their country’s official language can find this a barrier to thriving in society. But does that mean children should be educated only in the official language? It’s a complex question. As we found in the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report: Reaching the Marginalized, educating children in their mother tongues can be a powerful way to prevent them from becoming marginalized.

International Mother Language Day on February 21 is a good opportunity to reflect on the connections between education and the world’s linguistic richness. Nearly 7,000 languages are spoken around the world, but many education systems do not reflect this diversity. About 221 million school-age children speak languages at home that are not recognized in schools.

Children who study in their mother tongue usually learn better and faster than children who study in second languages. Pupils who start learning in their home language also perform better in tests taken in their official language of instruction in their later school years.

The complexity of the issue is reflected by the fact that being taught only in one’s mother tongue can also be a route to marginalization. People who cannot speak a country’s dominant language often have restricted opportunities for employment and social mobility.

World Youth Report puts focus on skills

As youth unemployment figures continue to rise in many parts of the world, the need for young people to have the skills that employers want is drawing more and more attention – not least from the young themselves. Their voices can be heard in the latest UN World Youth Report, “Youth Employment: youth perspectives on the pursuit of decent work in changing times,” recently launched in New York.

Many of the opinions and experiences shared in the World Youth Report – which was largely compiled using online discussions with young people around the world – reflect questions that we will be examining in the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, on youth, skills and work. We are seeking the views of young people as we compile our report, including on our Youth, Skills & Work blog.

“My academic training did not prepare me for paid employment at all,” commented one contributor to the UN report’s discussions, Dayo, 26, from Nigeria.

Some of the views in the report point directly to the kinds of policy questions that are preoccupying governments – and employers – eager to match skilled jobs with skilled workers.