The Widening Educational Gap for Syrian Refugee Children

Two years after the Supporting Syria conference in London, where international donors and governments of host countries agreed to make sure that by the end of 2017 all 1.7 million Syrian school-aged children would be enrolled in school, more than 40% of all school-aged Syrian children living in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq still do not have access to education.

With increasing levels of poverty among refugee families in the region, the future looks more bleak with the day for the more than half a million of young Syrians who are out of school, who do not have any chance to work on their future, and with that on the future of their home country.

Despite commitments made in London to provide US$1.4 billion and additional pledges of the international community in Brussels a year later, alongside commitments from host countries to ensure access to quality education for all Syrian children, the international donors have failed to delivered their financial commitments and host countries maintain restrictive policies that keep children out of school.