“The Paradox of Education for Refugees: Noor’s Perpetuating Social Exclusion Instead of Social Integration” “تعلیم کا المیہ: سماجی شمولیت کے بجائے سماجی اخراج کا شکار نور”
- Abdul Moeed
- Oct 25, 2024
- 3 min read
Imagine being 12 years old and seeing your home reduced to rubble, your school gone, and you’re forced to flee to a foreign land. But amidst such chaos, you find a small tent in this refugee camp with a chalkboard and a handful of books. For many children in these refugee camps, this tent means hope—a glimmer of normalcy in a life turned upside down by war. In fact, for millions of displaced children, education is more about fighting trauma, rebuilding their identity, and fostering a sense of belonging than about learning math or history. But the path to education in these crisis zones is anything but smooth.
Education Under Siege: A Challenge for a Refugee
More than 50% of refugee children of school age have absolutely no access to education, according to the UNHCR. In war-torn parts of the world, like Syria, South Sudan, and Afghanistan, displacement has demolished entire structures of education, leaving millions of children vulnerable to leading a life with no learning. This is more than a statistic; this is a lost generation, holding on to the only thread of hope they have, and that is education. What’s worse, consistent educational infrastructure is practically non-existent in refugee camps. Some of the more fortunate camps have temporary learning spaces, but they oftentimes operate on the bare minimum. Just imagine trying to focus with no desks, no textbooks, no reliable source of electricity, and only one teacher managing 60 students of varying ages and abilities. In some places, classes are held outside, using rocks as their seating charts. Refugee children often bounce from camp to camp, or country to country, never being in one place long enough to attend school. That doesn’t stop many of them from fighting to learn.
A story of resilience: Noor’s journey
Noor, a Afghan refugee, personifies that resiliency. Having lost her home in Kabul, she and her family fled to the borders of “Wehsh” in Pakistan. To Noor, the makeshift school in the camp represented at least that one thing that would maybe give her a sense of normalcy in the chaos of refugee life. Noor, who attended daily, has one teacher for 50 children and few materials. But vividly she wants to become a teacher one day. Her story reflects the struggle and hope of millions like her—children who see education as a lifeline in times of despair.
Challenges Encountered by Noor in Pakistan
Struggling with identity crisis as well as citizenship dilution, Noor and many other people like her encountered tremendous challenges for their intellectual development and institutions like Schools which were seen to empower them rather perpetuated this sense of alienation and the feeling of being an outsider, just like completely segregated and not socially integrated into that community. Facing remarks like, “Don’t sit with, don’t share your lunch with them because they are namak haram afghans”, displays the need for intervention on how the host countries like Pakistan do take these refugees in just for the sake of foreign aid coming in the country which although also doesn’t end up translating to them.
Noor and his journey from middle school up until here in Lums is filled with tons of hurdles and experiences which displays the level of social exclusion that is faced by her despite such similar basic things like religion as well as many cultural practices but the fact that her teachers discriminating against her in middle school, to her being bullied in APWA college Lahore on belonging to a different ethnicity, to her not been able to get a visa for a fully funded exchange in Turkey because of incomplete citizenship rights, also points towards how schooling in conflict zones for refugee often tend to make it way more challenging for them in comparison to their counterparts and the sad and unfortunate aspect is that no one wants to do anything about that.
I would like to end this blog on a powerful note in my conversation with Noor from the last weekend, in which she mentions, “Kya faida hai is taleem ka? Har jagah to yeh ehsaas dilati hai ke main bahar ki hoon, jaise is samaaj mein meri koi jagah nahi. Parhai khatam bhi ho jaye to kya? Yeh sirf meri tanhai aur barha degi.” In response to which i mentioned, “Taleem tumhein aage barhne ka mauqa degi, tumhein muashrat mein shaamil karegi.” But her last response i believe made me speechless and is the best pinnacle to reflect upon in which she expressed.
“Kab? Jab main apni shanakht kho doongi? Yeh taleem, yeh idaray sirf unhein qabool karte hain jo pehle se taaqatwar hain. Main jahan bhi jati hoon, sirf ek ajnabi ki tarah khud ko paati hoon. Koi jagah nahi, koi apnayat nahi.”