UNHCR and other aid agencies are calling for access to quality education for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
55 per cent of refugees in the Rohingya settlements in Cox’s Bazar, South-Eastern Bangladesh, are children under the age of 18. However, 36 per cent of Rohingya youngsters aged 3-14 and 91 per cent of youth and adolescents still lack access to any learning opportunities in the refugee sites.
Many Rohingya children also lacked schooling in Myanmar.
Yet, the power of education to break the cycle of poverty, violence and injustice has been well proven. The refugee children and their parents are eager to access learning opportunities, and recognised qualifications which can give them the skills to help rebuild their communities in the future.
The five year old Anju Ara and seven year old Hossain love learning.
They go the Sunshine Learning Centre that runs by the Bangladeshi organization BRAC and funded by UNHCR in the Kutupalong refugee settlement, Bangladesh.
The learning centres run three shifts a day for seven to 14 year-olds. English is taught, along with Burmese, writing and math.
Kutupalong is the largest refugee settlement in the world. It is home to over 620,000 Rohingya refugees, more than half are children.
However, few get the quality education they need, and 91% per cent of youth aged 15-24 get no schooling at all.
UNHCR and other aid agencies are calling for access to quality education for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh~UNHCR
