Back to school, but not for all of Syria's children

Standing in line in the courtyard of their school in the capital Damascus, scores of Syrian girls in pink and blue uniforms saluted the flag and sang the country’s national anthem. A few miles away in a suburb, children played in the courtyard of a rehabilitated school, where shattered windows were replaced but charred walls and pockmarks from bullets remained on building facades.

Jordan’s Ministry of Education reported that 31 percent of school-aged Syrian refugee children were not receiving formal or non-formal education. Child marriage has also increased in recent years — 2016 Jordanian religious court data shows that 36 percent of registered Syrian marriages in Jordan involved a girl younger than 18, four times more than in 2011.

The war is far from over, however, and its devastation has been particularly scarring for the country’s children, including those who fled the conflict, Geert Cappelaere, regional director of the U.N. Children’s agency UNICEF, said. Loss of families’ livelihoods, pervasive poverty, trauma and continued insecurity — even in areas where fighting has ended — as well as severe aid funding cuts are among the biggest obstacles facing Syria’s children. Some 2 million kids in Syria remain out of school. Nearly one out of three Syrian schools is out of service. Some 180,000 qualified teachers have also left the system. Since April, 31 children were killed by unexploded ordnance, according to UNICEF, including in areas where fighting ended.

In northwestern Syria, where the government is threatening an offensive in Idlib province, 1 million children — many of them already displaced more than once by the conflict — are bracing for a bruising military campaign. Conditions are also difficult in neighboring countries, where more than 4 million Syrian refugees live, over half of them children. At least 700,000 refugee children are out of school, and many more are at risk of dropping out. In this new phase of the war, donor countries are debating how to best to pool their funds.