When a massive humanitarian disaster happens, education is the least international humanitarian relief agencies think about. Thousands of people in immediate need of food, water, shelter and protection call for an immediate help, which comes in all shapes and sizes. A coordinated system of support is structured to help these people, to protect them, to cover them with blankets, to feed them and to take all necessary precautions against diseases. Refugees are haunted in panic and desperate because they have lost their homes. Whether it was war or a natural disaster, it doesn’t make too much difference. For reasons they cannot understand, they are evacuated, terrified and profoundly traumatized.

According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), currently in Africa there are 2.1 million refugees, 305,000 asylum-seekers, 6.3 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and nearly 100,000 stateless people. The largest refugee camps are established in Sudan, Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya, while others are located in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Liberia, and Angola. The UNHCR reports that unlike the global trends, the number of refugees in the African continent is declining. However, nearly 98 per cent of the refugees remain in exile for prolonged periods.

One of the most disregarded aspects of refugee populations in Africa is the percentage of children living in refugee camps. In almost every case, the majority of refugee and IDP populations are children. However, humanitarian assistance for children is minimal and it definitely overlooks education.

The importance of education in refugee camps

Refugee children are traumatized and trauma often produces new behavior patterns. In the context of a refugee camp, little girls may be attacked or threatened with rape and little boys may be recruited into gangs. It is a matter of survival in the new reality; an issue of being the strongest. Adolescent women may get pregnant too early out of ignorance and adolescent men may get married too young. In other words, the lives of children in a refugee camp change so abruptly and fall apart so quickly that parents cannot really catch up with these changes, given their own survival problems. Therefore, the need for a teacher/mentor, who is able to guide children and organize education programs, is absolutely required.

Refugee children are not interested in life because they do not have a life. This, combined with the absence of education, may prove extremely dangerous because it can produce violence driven by hidden fears. One way to address these problems is to educate children. Recruiting teachers in African refugee communities is the answer to a series of social problems.

The international agency that protects and assists refugees in Africa is the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR is present in most of African refugee camps trying to coordinate the relevant activities. However, refugees are often the victims of arguments over the curriculum. In the case of Burundian refugees in Tanzania, the officials had to decide which curriculum would be more suitable for the primary school students, that of the home country or the host nation; in other situations, the issue of the creation of a hybrid curriculum was addressed as in the case of Liberian and Sierra Leonean refugees in Guinea. In any case, UNHCR establishes rules and norms to ensure the development of educational projects.

Apart for UNHCR, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have taken initiatives to organize religious schools for Rwandan refugees in Tanzania. Christian and Muslim denominations have a place to exercise and be taught their religion. The UNESCO-UNICEF structure has organized also Swahili language classes for the Rwandan refugees as well as primary schools. Besides, one of the most successful steps taken towards the education of Rwandan refugees in Tanzania is the introduction of the Teacher Emergency Package (TEP). TEP aims at enabling students to express their feelings of trauma, while developing literacy and numeracy skills. Originally introduced by UNESCO-UNICEF in Somalia, TEP provides students with all the necessary material to learn through structured lesson planning and leisure time activities. Each package contains school supplies from Asia and Europe, usually 40 hard slates and 80 slate crayons, 80 exercise books, pencils, pencil sharpeners, erasers, and chalk. Teachers are provided with a teacher’s guide, alphabet, a registration book, pens, blackboard paint, number posters and a map of the home country.

The United Nations and NGO education officials took the initiative to Children Activity Centers in Burundian refugee camps to shelter the Burundian refugees in Tanzania. By recruiting experienced teachers for teacher mentoring under a two-week intense curriculum, they managed to overcome the resistance of the Tanzanian authorities that banned schooling from refugee camps.

Educating children in African refugee camps is an intricate task that requires many coordinated efforts. Humanitarian organizations, local government officials, educators, parents and children, all need to be part of education activities.

All refugee children should be provided impartial access to good quality education to ensure minimum learning achievements for each one of them. The UNESCO-UNICEF structure continues to make efforts to link education to development in Africa viewing education as a part of a broader challenge to educate refugee children and offer them a chance to a better life.