UNICEF resumes school transportation for vulnerable children, despite financial strains

AMMAN — UNICEF Jordan has recently resumed its programme providing transportation to school for over 2,000 refugee and vulnerable children residing in remote settlements, according to UNICEF Jordan communication specialist Miraj Pradhan. 

The service was restarted some two weeks ago thanks to recent funding provided by the governments of the US and Germany, Pradhan told The Jordan Times on Monday.

According to a report published by UNHCR and UNICEF last year, lack of transportation services was one of the primary reasons why children in Mafraq and those living in smaller households were less likely to attend school than their peers in other governorates and in larger households.

“We used to pay for a mini-bus driver to take my son to school, but later my son had to start walking to school because we could not afford the transportation costs anymore,” a survey participant said, adding: “One day, my child came back home crying, he said that kids threw rocks at him and verbally abused him on his way back home and I could not do anything about it, because I can’t support him with daily allowance and transportation to school.”

The transportation programme was halted earlier this year after UNICEF Jordan announced its decision to reduce the scale and scope of several of its education programmes for Syrian refugee children due to insufficient international support.

“Some of UNICEF’s programmes for children are critically underfunded this year, and we are being forced to make extremely difficult choices that include cutting cash assistance to help children go to school, and closing Makani centres where they receive learning support and protection services,” Pradhan lamented, citing only 54 per cent of the $209 million needed to run programmes for children this year being received as of September 9.

Due to the funding gap, some 2,000 students residing in remote settlements were suffering from the lack of transportation to and from school, while only 10,000 Syrian refugee children out of a total of 55,000 eligible children from unprivileged families continue to receive financial support from UNICEF to cover educational expenses such as school material or uniforms.

In addition, some 54 Makani centres providing learning support, community-based protection and youth services have been closed since the onset of the financial crisis, Pradhan noted, warning “a total of 85 Makani centres will be closed leaving over 50,000 of the most vulnerable children without learning support, child protection or life skills services, crucial to retaining children in school”.

Over 130,000 Syrian refugee children in Jordan were enrolled in schools across refugee camps and host communities in 2017 according to UNICEF Jordan Representative Robert Jenkins, who noted that the number of Syrian children enrolled in the UN agency’s catch-up and dropout programmes in 2017 reached 5,600, while the number of Syrian children enrolled in KG2 surpassed 3,000. 

However, about 31 per cent of an estimated 233,000 school-aged Syrian refugee children in Jordan were still out of school in April this year.

“Vulnerable children will be negatively affected if the trend of drop in aid continues, and already rising rates of child labour and early marriages among children will continue to grow as families are going through tough economic conditions,” Jenkins said during an interview with The Jordan Times in January, stressing: “It is absolutely critical that we maintain the level and scope of our programmes, or in the end, children will be negatively affected.”

“That is what is keeping me up at night, and we are trying to do all we can to continue to engage with our key donors and the international community and stress on the need to sustain assistance to Jordan,” the official added.