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Beirut – An organization warned “Save the Children” (Save the Children) Thursday of an “educational disaster” in Lebanon, where children from the most vulnerable groups face a real risk of permanently disrupting education in the wake of an economic collapse exacerbated by measures to address the Corona virus.
In a report on the education sector crisis in Lebanon, the organization said: “The social and economic crisis in Lebanon is turning into an educational disaster, while the most vulnerable children face a real risk of never returning to school. school”.
Since the coronavirus outbreak began a year ago, the organization has estimated the number of children out of school at more than 1.2 million. And he said that last year, Lebanese children received their education in 11 weeks, while Syrian refugee children received a much lower rate, due to the closure of schools for various reasons, including the popular protest movement against the political class and the appropriate closure measures. to the outbreak of Corona.
The prolonged collapse has deepened the poverty level, as more than half of Lebanese are below the poverty line, while the rate rises to ninety and seventy percent among Palestinian and Syrian refugees, respectively.
Poverty, according to the report, is a severe barrier to children’s access to education, while many families cannot afford the costs of learning requirements or are forced to depend on children for income.
Lebanon was one of the first countries to impose school closures in March 2020, due to the virus outbreak. A distance education system has been adopted and its effectiveness varies between public and private schools.
The economic crisis makes distance education increasingly out of reach for children, as their families are unable to incur internet costs due to the deterioration of the local currency exchange rate and tens of thousands of residents lose their jobs or part of their wages.
Jad Saqr: Most of the children in Lebanon do not have enough money to buy their basic necessities.
The report quoted a boy named Adam (11 years old) as saying that he and his two sisters share a smartphone to receive their lessons and that he must go to the neighbors’ house to use the internet.
“The education of thousands of children in Lebanon hangs by a thread,” said the organization’s director in Lebanon, Jennifer Morhad, warning that many of them may never return to their studies, either because many have already been lost. lessons or because their families cannot afford to send them to school.
In addition to losing their ability to learn, the organization warned that children who do not attend school are at greater risk of being victims of child labor, child marriage and other forms of abuse and exploitation.
He urged stakeholders to act quickly “to ensure that a whole generation does not miss the opportunity to get an education” and to open schools whenever possible.
Last year, Save the Children warned of the threat of hunger that threatens nearly a million people in the Beirut area due to the severe economic crisis that affected food security in a country that relies heavily on imported quantities food.
He said that “around a million people in the Beirut area do not have enough money to secure food, more than half of them are children threatened by hunger due to the prolonged economic crisis in Lebanon.”
“We will start to see children starve before the end of the year,” said the organization’s acting director in Beirut, Jad Saqr. “The crisis hits everyone, both Lebanese families and Palestinian and Syrian refugees.”
He pointed out that 910,000 people in Greater Beirut, including 564,000 children, do not have enough money to cover their basic needs.
Last September, an aid organization warned of the danger of children dropping out of school after the Beirut port explosion.
The organization warned that at least one in four children in the Lebanese capital could stop studying after 163 schools were damaged by the blast.
The International Rescue Committee said in a statement that “more than 85,000 students were enrolled in schools that were damaged by the explosion, and it will take up to a year to repair the most affected buildings.”
“Although the Ministry of Education is working hard to find places for the children in the new schools, the additional disruption this will cause in their lives is of great concern,” he added.
“Students from the affected schools will have to travel long distances to get to their new place of study, as well as additional transportation costs, which is something that poor families will not be able to bear,” he added.
The New York-based committee said: “Safety and harassment will be a major concern for children using public transportation.”
And he warned that these factors will put many children at risk of dropping out of the education system in the coming months.
He indicated that the slow pace of the rebuilding process and parents’ concerns about the cost and safety of transporting their children to alternative schools, as well as sending children to work to help their poor families, may keep more students out. from school.
“Overall, we expect to see much fewer children enrolled in school in September, and the dropout rate is high as the school year progresses,” said the Committee’s Acting Director in Lebanon, Muhammad Nasser.
Schools have not received their students normally since the outbreak of the new Corona virus. Lebanon has recorded more than 35,000 injuries, including at least 340 deaths, as of last February.
Lebanon began vaccinating teachers this week, in a step that the Education Ministry hopes is a step “towards the safe return of integrated education.”
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