The Syrian civil war is leaving a frighteningly large number of displaced children out of the education system. According to UNICEF, 6 mn children are affected by the conflict in Syria at present, with 2.5 mn more affected beyond Syria’s borders. Aside from their need of food and shelter, they also require access to education. If left unaddressed, the situation will, almost certainly, lead to another crisis in the future. “Roughly one of every two Syrian refugee children aged five to seventeen in Lebanon is currently out of school, or more than 180,000 children,” Elizabeth Buckner and Dominique Spencer write for the Carnegie Endowment. The problem is worse for older children, with “less than 10% of Syrian refugees of secondary school age are in classrooms,” according to the World Bank’s Noah Yarrow, who warns that because of this low enrollment rate “the risk of losing a generation of skilled professionals is very real.” Lebanon has responded by creating double shift schools and, for higher education, a number of universities have introduced initiatives to assist displaced Syrian refugees with their educational attainment.

The problem is not exclusive to Lebanon: in Egypt, as we mentioned yesterday, Syrian students continue to struggle. “Not only do they struggle to get into schools, they struggle to pay for them seeing as they’re considered foreign nationals,” according to a report by Al-Monitor. Besides UNICEF, to which you can donate here, there are number of other organizations working to improve access to education. One is Jusoor, which has been working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon since June 2013 and seeks “to ensure Syrian refugees in Lebanon have a holistic, well rounded primary school education through integration into formal schooling whenever possible.” Outside of Lebanon, there is The Syria Fund, an initiative focusing on providing Syrian refugee families living in Mafraq and Azraq in Jordan beyond the UN-organized refugee camps. It currently focuses on “building education facilities to provide access to children who have missed years of school” as well as providing material food and in-kind support.