Dubai: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched a ‘Back to School’ campaign to raise awareness and foster community support for refugee children in the Middle East and North Africa region.
According to the organisation, the campaign urges people to become voices in support of refugee children in order to “enlighten the greatest possible number of individuals regarding refugee children’s plight, and advocate for a better future through access to education”.
‘Back to School’ runs under UNHCR’s online campaign, ‘Voices for Refugees’, that seeks to mobilise support for internally displaced people and refugees in the region.
Recent UNHCR statistics indicate that, at present, there are 12 million refugee children around the world. The Syrian conflict alone has forced two million children to flee their homes, leaving their memories behind. This has resulted in a population of emotionally and physically traumatised Syrian refugee children, 447,138 of whom have received psychological support to overcome the ordeals they have endured at a tender age. Without proper education, many of these children become susceptible to threats, including child labour, particularly in the informal sector, and early marriage.
“It is deeply saddening that such high numbers of refugee children, due to circumstances out of their control, and beyond their comprehension, are unable to access education,” said Husam Shaheen, UNHCR’s Regional Private Sector Partnerships Manager for MENA region.
Recent statistics show that 5.6 million Syrian children are affected by conflict in Syria. People from the Mena region can help support UNHCR’s team by becoming voices for children through an online registration form.
Supporters, after becoming voices, can communicate with Syrian refugee children and send them messages by signing up at http://voices.unhcr.org/.
