Young Syrians’ Future Must Not Become Another Casualty Of This Bloody War

It's time for the international community to do more. Labour are calling on the UK government to back radical plans to get Syrian refugees back into education.

In the last three years Syria has been torn apart by civil war. This is the same street in Homs in 2011 and 2014

Via tumblr.thefjp.org and ec.europ.eu

More than 100,00 have died

9 300 000 require humanitarian assitance

6.5 million internally displaced (UNOCHA)

Disease and hunger are rampant, and Polio has re-ermerged

(as of 9 January 2014)

But for Syria’s neighbours this isn’t just a Syrian crisis, it’s a refugee crisis as well

reliefweb.int

Half of them are children

Education is becoming a casualty of war

Oxfam, Unicef

If Syria’s refugee children were a country it would have the worst enrolnment rate in the world – 5 times worse than sub-saharan Africa. Syria’s enrolment rate used to be 97%

That's why UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos put education at the forefront of the Kuwait II Pledging conference

UN

The British government has, rightly, already given £500 million to the Syrian crisis response

But there is an incredibly long way to go

reuters

And despite efforts to provide Syrian children with uninterrupted learning, education remains the most underfunded sector of the response.

The international community must fully fund the UN appeal – but we must think bigger to give every child a right to an education.

Unicef and its partners are leading calls to raise a billion for children through their #NoLostGeneration campaign

Unicef

This is a great start, but the British government should be even more ambitious

Looking at Lebanon

Al Arabiya

Lebanon is a country of just 4.4 million people, but it’s taken more than 850,000 refugees.

But there are no camps

UNDP

Syrian refugees are being hosted within Lebanese communities. That’s extraordinarily generous, but Lebanese schools simply cannot cater for that many children.

It’s like taking the existing population of London and adding the entire population of Birmingham

And Manchester

So we have to find an innovative solution

ODI

Labour are calling on the government to back a $502 million plan that would educate 300,000 Syrian in children, with contingency provision for a further 200,000, over three years. As well as other measures, the plan centres around ‘double-shifting’. So when Lebanese children go home, Syrian children can use the same building later in the day. The plan was devised by Kevin Watkins and is supported by Gordon Brown

Tearing down the language barrier

The plan would also look at tearing down language barriers to allow Syrian children to learn in a language they understand and ditch rules which bar children who no longer hold their old Syrian education documents from sitting exams.

Everyone deserves an education

UN

No one wants to see a generation of Syrian children grow up without an education. That’s bad for them, it’s bad for the region, and it’s bad for global stability.

What the UK government should do

Labour is calling on the British government to back this plan and use Wednesday's conference to:

•Build international support for the scheme

•Show the leadership needed to galvanise and mobilise, the international community, regional governments and philanthropic bodies, in support of Syrian children.

•Urge neighbouring country governments to change the rules that keep children out of school through linguistic diktats or documentation requirements

Jim Murphy MP has written to the Development Secretary to ask her to consider these plans

buzzfeed.com

If you agree, why not write to your MP and tell them - http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/

If you want to read more about the plan take a look at jimmurphymp.com. And if you would like to hear more about what the Shadow International Development team is up to then why not sign up to our newsletter by emailing 'newsletter' to [e-mail]