Development Minister Svenja Schulze: “Most people who have to leave their homeland find refuge in their own country or in neighboring countries, which often do not have much themselves. This also applies to children. Refugee children in particular are particularly dependent on their right to education being realized. If they can go to kindergartens and schools in their host communities, this is not only good for them, but for the development of society as a whole. At the same time, most host communities cannot meet this challenge alone. That is why we support them in this – in such a way that the refugee children benefit from it, but also the locals.”
Recently, 120 million people worldwide were displaced – a record high – and 50 million of them are children. More than half of these children do not go to school. Girls in crisis and refugee contexts have it particularly hard. Around 75 percent of refugees are taken in by low- or middle-income countries, 21 percent even by the least developed countries, which often pushes the educational systems of the host countries to their capacity limits. But even wealthy countries like Germany do not find it easy to offer all refugee children a place in a school.
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Svenja Schulze at the Saturn Makani Center in the Zaatari refugee camp.
The BMZ supports host countries in setting up or expanding their education systems, thereby pursuing integrative, structure-building approaches that benefit refugees, returnees and host communities alike. Education is a focus of the BMZ’s special initiative “Refugees and Host Countries”. Since 2014, it has supported more than five million children and young people in exercising their right to education.
One example of this is the support given to Jordan, which has taken in a particularly large number of refugees relative to its population.
