Meanwhile...back in the refugee camps....
Schools open in Sudanese refugee camps
Liz Ford
Friday October 8, 2004
Children who have been forced to flee their homes in the Darfur region of Sudan are being encouraged to attend school in their refugee camps.
Around 60,000 Sudanese children of school age have settled in 10 camps in neighbouring Chad following fighting between the Janjaweed militia and the Sudanese Liberation Army.
This week, 26,000 refugee children began school in their camps supported by Unicef, which has helped train teachers and provided tents for classrooms, textbooks, chalk, exercise books and other educational material. Pupils will follow the Chadian school calendar, but will be taught under the Sudanese curriculum.
The new school year began on Monday and a ceremony to mark the occasion was held in the village of Farchana, about 60km from the Sudanese border, where the first refugee camp opened.
Some 12,500 Sudanese refugees have settled in the camp, including 2,474 children aged between six and 12.
According to Unicef, the school enrolment rate in Darfur is poor and many refugee children have never previously attended classes. Working in partnership with other international organisations, it hopes the camp schools will help widen access to education, and press upon parents its benefits.
More than 120 million children around the world still do not attend school. More than half are girls, and 83% live in sub-Saharan Africa, south and east Asia and the Pacific. In sub-Saharan Africa the number of girls left out of school each year rose from 20 million in 1990 to 24 million in 2002.....
education.guardian.co.uk |
