Living on hope, hoping for education: The failed response to the Syrian refugee crisis

Four years into the Syrian crisis, over half a million Syrian refugee children are out of school – and the numbers are rising. The education crisis is fuelling child labour and early marriage. Syria’s children have suffered a reversal in educational opportunity that is without parallel in recent history.

Aid donors have been slow to respond to the education crisis facing Syrian refugees. Yet failure to respond effectively to the education crisis will have profound consequences for the region’s children now and throughout the coming decades. Nowhere is that danger more visible than in Lebanon.

This paper looks at the education crisis among Syrian refugees. It calls for the full financing of education requests set out in the Regional Response Plan and of UNICEF’s education programmes. The paper is divided into two parts. The first provides a brief regional overview. The second focuses on Lebanon, which hosts the largest Syrian refugee population.