Around the world, there are too many refugee children who haven’t just lost their homes, they’re also losing their futures every single day.
More than half of all the refugee children in the world – 3.5 million children – aren’t in school.
Last year world leaders made a promise: that all refugee children would be in school and learning within a few months of becoming refugees. One year on that promise has been broken. Since that promise was made, refugee children have lost out on over 700 million days of school. Every day another 1.9 million school days are lost.
The time to act is now. Millions of the world's out-of-school refugees have already lost years of learning. In fact, many have never had the chance to go to school. They cannot afford another year of inaction.
Refugee children and their parents consistently identify education as a priority. They see schooling as a source of hope and opportunity - and they are right. It is time for the international community to listen to them.
In our new report ‘Losing out on Learning’ we assess progress in implementing the education-related commitments made in the New York Declaration on Migrants and Refugees and at the 2016 Leaders’ Summit on Refugees.
We call for countries to keep their promises to get refugee children back into school by:
- Ensuring that there is enough funding to help already poor countries hosting large refugee populations to provide refugee children with a quality education. Currently refugee education gets only a fraction of the funding it needs.
- Asking refugee-hosting countries to they’ll implement policies to ensure refugee children can attend school and learn from a quality education.
By keeping our promise to get all refugee children back into school we can help ensure that every last refugee child has a future.
CASE STUDY
Daniel* is a budding scientist. He fled South Sudan and is now living in Bidi Bidi, Uganda, the largest refugee settlement in the world. Daniel’s school represents a microcosm of the challenges facing refugees: there are over 1,400 registered students in a school with just 5 teachers. His classroom, a temporary tent-like structure is hot and very dark. There is not one textbook in sight.
Despite this, Daniel and his peers want to learn. Learn more about call to ensure all refugee children are in school and learning.
OUR EVERY LAST CHILD CAMPAIGN
The world has made incredible progress for children - but millions are still being denied the opportunity to survive and learn simply because of who they are and where they live. Save the Children's campaign – Every Last Child – strives to do whatever it takes to reach the world's most excluded children.
Without urgent action to tackle this exclusion, progress for children will slow and may even halt altogether. With this campaign we are asking the world to put excluded children first and remove the barriers that exclude millions of children from healthcare, nutrition and education each year.
With your help, we can build a world in which no child’s opportunities are determined by who they are or where they were born. Together we can reach every last child.
Our Every Last Child campaign will address some of the key causes of exclusion so that we can reach 15 million children and contribute towards progress on the SDGs. Together we can reach every last child.