Evaluation of UNICEF's Welcome to School Initiative - Kyrgyz Republic

The ethnic violence between Kyrgyz and Uzbek people in Osh and Jalal-Abad June 2010 resulted in direct barriers to children’s access to school. Three schools were destroyed – two in Osh oblast and one in Jalal-Abad oblast – and several other schools in the affected areas suffered damages. Refugees from Barack, a Kyrgyz enclave in Uzbekistan, were informally settled in Kyrgyzstan’s Ak-tash village where no school is available.

Displacement caused by the conflict had adverse affects on school enrolment. Families worried about challenges in enrolling children in new schools, particularly for the many internally displaced children. A rapid assessment carried out before launching of the WTS Initiative showed that out of around 500,000 school children in Osh and Jalal-Abad provinces around 83,000 children were affected.

The main objective of this consultancy was to conduct an evaluation of UNICEF Welcome to School Initiative (WTS), define strengths, weaknesses and challenges of the implemented programme with the view to identify which WTS activities will be relevant for the 2012-2016 Country Programme (CP) or for other partners. The report will be used by UNICEF, MOES and other implementing partners who addressed education issues during and after the emergency.