Chad: Rethinking Education in Emergencies Interventions to Break the Vicious Cycle of Underdevelopment and Humanitarian Crisis

Structural weaknesses and underdevelopment such as extreme poverty, weak governance, gender disparities, and the lack of infrastructure and basic social services significantly worsen the impacts of the crises. The dynamics create a vicious circle of further deterioration of livelihoods of the local population and severe vulnerabilities of the affected population. The complex nature of the problem is especially visible in the education sector. Following the sharp fall of oil prices, main source of the government revenues, the government suspended payment of subsidies for community teachers. Claiming payment of subsidy arrears, community teachers are on strike for more than two years which led to the shutdown of more than 20% of primary schools located in crisis zones in 2015-2016. In the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year, civil servant teachers also went on strike against new government measures cutting bonus payouts and called for payment of salary arrears. As a result, public schools in the crisis zones remained closed for the first four months of the school year preventing both displaced and host community children from accessing education and causing a major setback to emergency education activities planned for these children.

Analyses show that the situation in Chad should be addressed as part of a broader effort to overcome the traditional divide between humanitarian and development interventions. Actions should optimize available resources to respond to the immediate and long-term needs of the affected population.