Lebanon Refugee Camps: History, Challenges and Proposed Outcomes
A refugee is described as a person who is fleeing life-threatening circumstances in their home country with hopes of finding asylum in another country. In a perfect world, a human can flee one country and receive safety and warm hospitality in another country. While this may be the case for some refugees, that is not the case for the majority and with a world total of internally displaced persons clocking in around 20 to 50 million (Sinclair) that will take a toll on many countries' resources and also on the large mass of people who are shifting the cultural climate of this world. Within those 20 to 50 million displaced people, “Save the Children UK estimated that 13 million children have been violently displaced within the borders of their own country” (Sinclair). When considering that children are the future of a country, that total becomes even grimmer. With such large masses of people migrating into a country, resources such as food, shelter and water run scare, as well as education. While food, shelter and water are necessary to live, and are the most important resources to initially secure for a refugee, education is equally important in regard to survival. However, there are a number of barriers that prevent refugees from accessing education and when you consider the 13 million children that hold the future of their home countries, access to education is vital.
For example, taking a look at the Syrian refugee crises, the United Nations estimates that 7.6 million Syrian people “have been internally displaced. When you also consider refugees (the UN predicts 4.27 million by the end of 2015), more than half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million is in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, whether they still remain in the country or have escaped across the borders” (Mercy Corps, 2015). The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees requested aid from countries to help with resettlement efforts and as of "October 2014, 24 countries, primarily in Europe and the Americas, have agreed to resettle Syrians" (Cultural Orientation Resource Center, 2014). The majority of Syrian refugees are fleeing to Lebanon and Jordan and in Lebanon specifically, Syrian refugees make up more than half the population “with numbers of 1.3 million as of 2015” (UNHCR). Therefore, Lebanon is holding a large piece of the Syrian future in its refugee camps which were constructed back in 1940’s and 1950’s (See timeline). Furthermore, according to a report from UNHCR in 2014, more than 50% of the nearly 400,000 Syrian children ages 5 to 17 are completely excluded from any form of education. The chart below identifies the multiple barriers that Syrian refugee children face when trying to access education:
_thumb.png){kind=link}