1. INTRODUCTION
Conflict is one of the most powerful determinants of whether a child is out of school. Half of the world’s out-of-school children are in conflict zones. That’s a staggering 29 million young minds (1) out of the classroom. Statistics show that when conflict disrupts a child’s education they are less likely to resume (2). The tragic irony is that those countries whose children are out of school are the very ones that are in the greatest need of educated citizens to help them rebuild. Afghanistan is a prime example of such a nation.
Afghan refugees are one of the largest and longest displaced populations in the world. Three decades of recurrent conflict has led to the education of successive generations of Afghan refugee children being disrupted, discontinued or forgotten, due to a range of barriers that are largely outside their control.
Today an estimated 2.6 million Afghans remain in exile – mainly hosted by Pakistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Pakistan is the second largest refugee-hosting country in the world, hosting around 1.5 million Afghan refugees, a figure that accounts for 10.5 per cent of the total global refugee population (3). Iran hosts around 950,000 Afghan refugees.
The Afghan refugee population in both Pakistan and Iran is young, with second and third generations of children having been born into displacement. Children below the age of 14 account for half of the 2.45 million Afghan refugees in both Pakistan and Iran (3), while youth (aged 15-24) also makes up a significant proportion of the population.