In less than four weeks' time the international community will convene in Geneva for the second Global Refugee Forum.
The Forum, which takes place every four years, will bring together states and other actors to commit to concrete pledges in support of the Global Compact on Refugees, including the Compact’s promise to get all children in school and learning within a few months of their displacement.
In the run up to the Forum, Save the Children have been speaking to refugee children around the world to ask them their priorities. We have carried out consultations with almost 300 refugee children, representing many different nationalities, across 7 refugee hosting countries.
For the world’s refugees, education is a source of opportunity and hope
Refugee children shared with us the many challenges they face, but also their dreams and hopes. As one refugee boy told us “We dream of a world where every child's voice is heard, where we can learn, play, and grow without fear”.
Yet having already lost their homes, millions of refugee children are now being deprived of the education they need to restore their hopes for a brighter future.
An estimated 51% of refugees – more than 7 million children – are currently out of school. Refugee children told us the many barriers they faced in accessing education. “I decided to leave school because a teacher made fun of my skin condition. It made me feel ashamed and sad, so I chose not to return”, a refugee girl said.
Another refugee girl told us “We can't do extracurricular activities; we do not feel safe”.
More than three-quarters of refugees live in low- and middle-income countries
Host country governments have a responsibility to remove policy and administrative barriers that prevent refugee children from accessing the national education system on the same terms as host community children. This is the most practical and sustainable way to meet refugee children’s need for safe, quality and accredited education.
However, host county governments, such as Jordan and Colombia cannot do this alone. 76% of refugees live in low- and middle-income countries whose education systems already struggle to meet the needs of children and where learning poverty is high. Yet the poorest host countries often receive little to no assistance for refugee education leaving them to absorb these costs alone.
The lack of predictable, long-term financing from the international community means that access to education that is guaranteed at the national level is in constant jeopardy. That’s why in our ‘Price of Hope’ report that Save the Children published earlier this year we called on the international community to mobilise the funding needed to meet the annual US$4.85 billion cost of providing education to refugees in low- and middle-income countries.
Educating the world’s refugees must be a shared global responsibility
Ahead of the GRF, a number of donors have come together with UNHCR to co-lead a multistakeholder pledge with the aim of providing more support to refugee hosting states to include refugee children in their national education systems.
The pledge helpfully sets out all the commitments by refugee hosting states to support refugee education but which require external assistance to deliver.
To support the pledge donors and other partners are encouraged to make commitments that include multi-year financial, policy, and/or technical support to cover the additional costs related to the inclusion of refugee children and/or to help strengthen national systems.
In providing a concrete and coordinated way for donors to support and resource the commitments made by host countries the pledge has potential to be transformative. It’s why it’s also being referred as a ‘megapledge’.
Its success, and that of the GRF, rests however on being able to unlock more and better financing for refugee education. This requires donors to commit to providing predictable, long-term financing for refugee education by increasing humanitarian and development assistance to refugee hosting states.
Donors can also join the pledge by making a pledge to Education Cannot Wait, the global fund for education in emergencies, which has reached more than two million refugees since its inception in 2016.
A fresh chance to provide refugee children the education they were promised
Five years on from the adoption of the Global Compact on Refugees, refugees continue to experience some of the lowest access rates to education in the world. They are demanding that we act and deliver the brighter future that was promised to them
The 2023 Global Refugee Forum is our opportunity to now turn the promise of the Global Compact into a reality by funding education for the world’s refugees. We must not waste it.
For more information read Save the Children’s refugee education report, The Price of Hope: Funding education for the world’s refugee children
