No Refuge for Women by Maria von Welser

Author:Maria von Welser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2017-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

TO SAVE THE CHILDREN

The refugee children in Lebanon, as well as in Turkey and Jordan, are particularly vulnerable to the effects of war and their flight. They can’t sleep; they scream at night, waking others in their tents. They dream of falling bombs, of snipers aiming at their feet. Everyone in the family suffers, alarmed at yet another sobbing child. The children of the Syrian Civil War will one day be able to live contented lives, but only with a lot of help from their parents and from specialists, even after peace has returned to their country.

And that is just one problem. A big one, admittedly, but there is another: these children will not have had a proper education, will be left by the wayside. This is true not only for the children in the refugee camps but for a whole generation of Syrians who cannot or are not allowed to go to schools in Syria. Only 40 percent of schools remain, more or less, in operation.

Earlier, even under President Bashar al-Assad, Syria was considered a model Arab country as far as education was concerned. Assad raised the education budget to 15 percent of the national budget—an impressive commitment. School was obligatory for all children between the ages of 5 and 15, with enrollment rates of 98 percent for girls and 99 percent for boys. Two-thirds of all children went on to high school. The illiteracy rate was only 5 percent.

The school system was set up by the French during their 1922–43 mandate, when France governed Lebanon and Syria. French and English remained compulsory subjects. International agencies complained about corporal punishment still being practiced in the schools and about the apparently poor training standards of teachers, but still, before the civil war, the education system in Syria worked.

And now? Tens of thousands of schools have been destroyed; many others have been turned into hospitals or barracks. Only 40 percent of all children in Syria actually went to school in the fall of 2015; in besieged Aleppo, only 6 percent. Only in relatively safe areas is school an option. There’s no chance at all in the regions occupied by ISIS: there, girls can’t attend and boys are sent to madrassas—religious schools—where they are taught a variety of Islam that will later allow them to enter paradise as suicide bombers.

At least Lebanon managed, as early as 2014, to absorb 200,000 Syrian children into its school system—often, when nothing else could be done, by organizing afternoon classes with lessons in Arabic.

Since 2015, the school readiness of refugee children in Lebanon has been tested—not only Syrian refugees, but also Palestinians in southern Lebanon. Unfortunately, only half the refugee children pass the test, and children who no longer attend state schools can no longer learn: the private schools cost money—all the mothers in the settlements emphasize this—and in a vicious circle, it’s money that the children have to earn.

One thing is sure: this war has cost more than the lives of 470,000 Syrians. It will

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.