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The coronavirus pandemic and Lebanon’s ongoing economic collapse risk depriving many children in the country of the right to education, Save the Children reported Friday.
Despite the efforts of the authorities to set up distance learning initiatives, the organization found that 75 percent of children find remote online learning difficult, with this number rising to 80 percent among girls.
“School has closed. My teachers are now using WhatsApp as an alternative, but we're finding it difficult to grasp the material. Our curriculum is hard as it is, let alone having to learn it over the phone,” Sahar, a 17-year-old Lebanese girl, said.
Syrian and Palestinian refugee children meanwhile reported that there was no provision for online learning through their schools. Many said that parents could not afford private tutors to finish their curriculum at home, and their education had effectively been suspended.
Save the Children’s survey of 137 Lebanese, and Palestinian and Syrian refugee children aged 12 to 24 also found that 66 percent of young people in Lebanon reported the need for financial support as family members faced job losses. Ninety percent of those said that this support was needed to cover basic essentials such as food.
“My sister was dismissed from work, so was my mother. My father, a taxi driver, is not allowed to work or leave the house. We're spending most, if not all of our time at home, doing nothing,” Sahar said.
The organization reported that in 2019, more than 70 percent of refugees already lived under the poverty line and said that school dropouts were likely to increase as families lose their livelihoods and can no longer afford to buy books, pay for transport and uniforms. The risk of child labor is likely to increase under these circumstances, it said.
Even before the closures linked to the economic and the coronavirus crises, almost half of school-aged Syrian children in Lebanon were not enrolled in public education in 2019, according to UNHCR data.
Save the Children called upon the Lebanese authorities and international community to roll out social assistance packages for families struggling to make ends meet under the tough economic circumstances and direct support to the education sector.
Lawmakers at Parliament’s Thursday legislative session adopted a LL1.5 trillion emergency coronavirus aid package. Around LL600 billion will go toward reinforcing the existing social security net, LL300 billion will be directed to farmers, LL300 billion to artisans and LL300 billion to the education sector.
Source: The Daily Star
