‘Child refugee left without education is target for terrorists’

Dubai: Every child refugee left without an education is a potential recruit for terrorists, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education of Jordan said during a press conference at the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai on Sunday.

At the press conference, which addressed the education refugee crisis, Professor Mohammad Thneibat said Jordan and Lebanon must not be left alone to face the refugee education crisis.

He said the international community must also share the responsibility of avoiding having a lost generation that is an easy target for terrorists.

“Around 145,000 Syrian children along with their families have come to Jordan and are receiving the same level of education as Jordanian children. The cost of spending on their education is $300 million (Dh1.10 million) per year.”

Thneibat said Jordan is receiving less than 36 per cent of the total cost of receiving and educating the children from the international community.

“Countries continue to pledge money but we are not receiving any funds. We are questioning the kind of commitment of the international community,”” said Thneibat who suggested that the international community create a trust fund that can be used for educating refugees.

Thneibat said the influx of refugee children has had a lot of negative impacts on the quality of education in Jordan, adding that it is the responsibility of the international community to help overcome this crisis because every uneducated refugee child is a project for terrorists.

Elias Bu Saab, Minister of Education in Lebanon, also believed that not providing these refugees with an education can lead to having a lost generation.

“People go to terrorism because they are poor, uneducated, fed up or brainwashed. My appeal is for countries to invest in education, to save these countries and save the world.”

Bu Saab also believed that the international community’s pledge to help does not always translate into actual help.

“The international community understands the problem by now. It should have a plan to respond quickly. The more time we wait before acting, the worse the problem becomes and it will spill to other countries. If we get the support and funds later it might be too late and we might be left with a lost generation,” he said.

In his special address at the closing plenary of GESF earlier, Bu Saab said Lebanon today has over 2 million refugees, 1.5 million of them from Syria including 450,000 children, compared to the country’s population of 4 million.

“Putting every child in classrooms is our biggest challenge. If you do not do so, it will open doors to many issues including child labour and abuse,” said Bu Saab.

“Our goal is to ensure that all the 450,000 Syrian refugee children are put to school by 2017. We have created the initiative, Reach All Children with Education (RACE), and have already put 100,000 students in the first year since the crisis, and 200,000 in the second year.” But there is a long way to go.

At a press conference held later where Bu Saab was joined by Thneibat and George Papandreou, former prime minister of Greece, the overwhelming consensus of the panel was that governments around the world lack the political will to implement solutions to resolve the refugee crisis.

To address the challenge, creative, out-of-the-box approaches are needed, said Bu Saab. “The cost of putting one Syrian refugee child in school is $336 per year; if we operate a double-shift, it will be $550 per year. But it is important that funds are raised urgently to resolve the crisis.”

Papandreou, who was a refugee himself, said countries must look at refugees as strength, not weakness.

“We need to help the 700,000 young Syrian refugees out of school to get an education. We need to stop looking at them as a crisis and invest in them and their education so that they can be the future leaders, architects, who will rebuild their countries,” he said.