Education on hold: How Syrian children in Lebanon are being shut out of the classroom

Beirut, Lebanon - It is easy to get lost in the dingy, maze-like alleyways of Beirut’s Shatila refugee camp. But the camp’s children have memorised every twist and turn, and they dart through the dense forest of apartment blocks seamlessly.

Some hawk vegetables in the local market; others dash to more affluent neighbourhoods to beg on the roadside. But very few are where they should be: in school.

Though established in 1949 for Palestinian refugees, today almost two-thirds of Shatila’s residents are Syrian. Since 2016, about 250,000 Syrian children across Lebanon, aged three to 18, have been kept out of school by poverty and exploitation.

Last week, the Lebanese government effectively barred approximately 50% of all displaced Syrian children in Lebanon from public education, after upholding a decision requiring non-Lebanese students to have legal residency or a UN refugee agency (UNHCR) certificate, which many displaced Syrians do not possess.

Lebanon’s beleaguered education system has struggled to recover from an economic crisis that began in 2019 and last year’s devastating two-month war between Israel and Hezbollah, which saw most public schools turned into displacement shelters.

However, analysts say the government’s decision comes as part of a broader pressure campaign designed to compel displaced Syrians to return to their war-torn country.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon have lived in a “coercive environment” for years, marked by discrimination, scapegoating, housing demolitions, raids, deportations, and bureaucratic red tape.

Michelle Randhawa, senior refugee and migrant rights officer at Human Rights Watch, said the government restrictions are part of a “cycle of pressure”, making life difficult for Syrian refugees and their children.

“Under international law, children, regardless of their status in the country, have the right to an education. Education should never be used as a political pawn, and parents should not have to worry from one year to the next if their children will be able to go to school,” Randhawa told The New Arab.

Last month, at a meeting with UNICEF representatives and the management board of its education fund for Lebanon, TREF, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said: “I reaffirm today: the children of Lebanon, regardless of origin or circumstance, must never be deprived of their right to learn. It is not only a moral obligation; it is a condition for Lebanon’s survival as a just and sovereign state.”

Nevertheless, in a government memo seen by The New Arab, Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) confirmed last week that it will uphold the previous caretaker government’s requirement for residency permits.

Last year, that policy forced 28,000 mostly Syrian children to drop out of school, according to ministry data.

This year, tens of thousands more refugee children in Lebanon will be vulnerable to risks stemming from not attending school, such as forced labour, human trafficking, early marriage and gender-based violence - already widespread among displaced communities.

About 1.5 million Syrian refugees fled to Lebanon after Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011 - making Lebanon the country with the highest number of refugees per capita in the world.

Many have returned since the fall of the Assad regime in December, with the support of a UN voluntary returns programme and government incentives. While most refugees have expressed their desire to return to Syria, some 1.2 million remain in Lebanon.

Like their Palestinian neighbours, Syrian refugees in Shatila and other camps live in abject poverty. Families are crammed into crumbling buildings at risk of collapse, with intermittent electricity and only saltwater flowing out of the taps.

Many Syrian families face an awful dilemma: remain displaced in Lebanon in an increasingly hostile environment where their children miss out on an education, or return to ruins in Syria, where more than 7,000 schools are damaged or destroyed.

“While many are returning to their country, for some it's not immediately possible and they will continue to need protection … All returns have to be completely voluntary, and the result of an informed decision,” a UNHCR spokesperson told The New Arab.

Carlos Naffah, a Lebanese academic familiar with education policy, said: “The decision, in my opinion, is inhuman and it should be revised.” He believes that in some cases, Syrian families have returned home to save their children’s education.

At the same time, Naffah said the Lebanese government is hamstrung by foreign aid cuts and the dire state of its public finances. But the education crisis has also been exacerbated by donor countries that have cut aid funding, he said.

For years, UN agencies that supported public school programmes in Lebanon have also been stymied by funding cuts. But the biggest blow came when the United States slashed its foreign aid budget after President Donald Trump took office in January.

So far this year, the UNHCR, the main organisation supporting Syrian refugees in Lebanon, has received only 22% of its required funding, cutting 15,000 children from its educational programmes.

“The government is bankrupt,” Naffah told The New Arab. “But as a neighbouring country and part of the international community, we should put all our effort to stabilise Syria because it is for the benefit of everyone.”

Meanwhile, educational NGOs in Lebanon, such as the Alsama Project (“the sky” in Arabic), are doing their best to fill the learning gap. But Alsama has a waiting list of some 800 students, about the same number it already teaches at its four education centres in Shatila and the nearby Bourj al-Barajneh camp.

Most students arriving at Alsama are illiterate, but the centre offers a unique curriculum that prepares them for university or skilled employment in just six years.

Marwa fled from her hometown of Deir az-Zour and the violence of civil war when she was a young girl. She was first educated in Lebanon’s public school system, where she faced discrimination. “I wasn’t accepted in public school because I was Syrian,” she said.

Last year, when Israel started bombing near the camp, she was displaced by war again and fled to Syria. But now she is in her final year of learning at Alsama.

She hopes to return to Syria after going to university to take part in her country’s recovery. “I want to study human resources and become a manager,” Marwa said. “I want to be a game changer in Deir az-Zour.”

But the students have spent most of their lives in Lebanon. For some, Syria is a strange land where any dreams they had have been swept away by 14 years of conflict.

“We spent our childhood here. In every neighbourhood, we have something to remember. There [in Syria] we only have bad memories,” said Israa, another student at Alsama. “It’s going to take at least five years. It’s safer now, but we couldn’t live there.”

Lebanon’s education ministry did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Alex Martin Astley is a freelance journalist based in Beirut, covering conflict, foreign policy, and social justice issues

Follow him on X: @AlexMAstley