Nearly three million Syrian children are not attending school due to the civil war raging in their homeland, an international charity group said on Thursday, as the country’s intractable conflict threatens to deny an entire a generation of education.
Syria’s civil war has killed more than 190,000 people, forced more than 3 million to seek refuge abroad and displaced another 6 million more inside the country. The report by the Britain-based Save the Children shows the devastating impact the conflict, now in its fourth year, has had on education and the future of a generation of young Syrians.
It is absolutely shameful that the obligation to protect schools is not being respected in this conflict, endangering the lives of innocent children
Countries like Egypt demand a dizzying array of official papers that most refugee parents do not possess. In Lebanon, there’s simply no space in many schools, with the education system overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of child refugees. Around 80 percent of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon don’t attend school, according to the report.
Within Syria, the report estimated that 3,465 schools, or one-fifth of the country’s educational buildings, were either destroyed or damaged, or are being used for military purposes, the report said.
“It is absolutely shameful that the obligation to protect schools is not being respected in this conflict, endangering the lives of innocent children,” said the organization’s regional director, Roger Hearn.
