Siqiao Liang

Refugee Education in Jordan amid the Gaza Conflict

Jordan has hosted refugees for decades. Nearly four million refugees currently reside in the country— 2.39 million Palestinians registered with UNRWA, 1.4 million Syrians, including approximately 620,000 registered with UNHCR, 50,000 Iraqis, and 20,000 refugees from other countries. Nearly half of Syrians in Jordan are children. The rights to quality education are inalienable to young refugees. While Jordan is not a party of the 1951 Refugee Convention, it is still obliged under various international treaties and national soft laws to facilitate the realization of refugees’ rights to education. 

Refugee students in Jordan face significant barriers to quality education. This paper finds that the recent conflict in Gaza has further exacerbated challenges in refugee education in two ways. First, the conflict contributes to defunding and weakening the capacity of education providers for refugee students, which include United Nations (UN) agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Second, the conflict has led to a disproportionate economic, social, and mental impact on refugee students, which limits their access to education and learning capacity. In addition, this paper identifies some practices and approaches that refugees, practitioners, and scholars adopt to resist the challenges, and advocate for further efforts while identifying directions for future research.