Refugee Children: Education in Emergencies for Empowerment

A famous Nigerian proverb says, “It takes an entire village to raise a child.” Today, when the world is facing one of the greatest migration crisis it has encountered, as a global village, the world as a whole would have to get together to solve the issue and ensure that children who are the most vulnerable victims of forced migration do not get impacted immeasurably. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) report 2015, hints at an alarming status, that of the world’s total refugee population, about 51 percent are children below 18. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has already launched a campaign ‘No Lost Generation’ that is focused on providing access to quality education to refugee children. Lebanon which is encountering a great rush of Syrian refugees had started in 2014, a program called ‘Reaching All Children with Education’ (RACE). The British Council has even gone a step further in providing online support to aspirants of higher education. They have started a program called ‘Language and Academic Skills and E-Learning Resource’ (LASER). It aims at providing entry level competence to people from 18–25 to enrol in tertiary education. The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has provided unrestricted access to education, to migrants at all levels and given a right to free education to all refugee children. However, the gravity of the problem is so very huge that a major gap in providing access to education and receiving it still exists for the refugee children