MORE than 90,000 Syrian refugee children in Jordan weren’t able to attend school last year, along with hundreds of thousands in neighbouring refugee host countries, prompting warnings of a ‘lost generation’ as a result of Syria’s five-year-old imperialist-driven war.
Boosted by international funding, the kingdom has now promised to make room for all refugee children in its schools, starting this week, by adding more afternoon shifts and hiring thousands of teachers.
For many children, this could be their last chance, said Robert Jenkins, the Jordan representative of UNICEF, the UN children’s agency. He said that the back-to-school programme ‘not only will have a great impact on individual children, but on the population as a whole and on Jordan as a whole and on the future potential rebuilding of Syria’.
Last Thursday, Hassan al-Ahmed signed up his nine-year-old daughter Aisha and his seven-year-old son Mohammed for first grade in Zarqa, northeast of the capital, Amman. The siblings, who fled Syria with their parents and two younger brothers in 2014, hadn’t been able to attend school before, but were told they could register this year.
‘The most important thing for me is to have my kids in school,’ said Ahmed, 30, who worked as a farm labourer in Syria and is illiterate. ‘If my kids don’t go to school, they can’t do anything in life.’ The promise of education for all is part of a broader deal made earlier this year at a conference on Syria aid in London.
Jordan pledged to give refugees access to legal work and education, as a way of keeping them in the region and discouraging them from migrating to Europe. In return, donor countries promised hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, concessional financing and trade benefits to pay for the refugee burden and boost Jordan’s struggling economy. Yet the aid is slow to trickle in.
Jordan’s education minister, Mohammed Thnaibat, said he needs about $1 billion over three years to educate refugee children and ease current overcrowding. The money would pay for doubling the number of schools with second shifts to 200, building 500 more classrooms, hiring 5,000 teachers and building 300 new schools.
Jordan received about $80 million so far for this year, enough to open schools to all, but not enough for keeping the programme going for the entire year, he said. ‘We cannot do this unless we get the grants from the donors and the international organisations who committed themselves that they will pay,’ the minister said in an interview.
Close to five million Syrian refugees have fled to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt since 2011. Jordan hosts about 660,000 registered refugees, though the total number of Syrians living there is about twice that figure, according to a census last year. More than 80 per cent of the registered refugees live in Jordanian towns and cities, while the rest settled in three camps, where schools have been established.
In the previous school year, about 145,000 refugee children were enrolled in Jordanian schools, while an estimated 91,000 did not attend, according to UNICEF. In Jordan, lack of classroom space is a major obstacle, along with growing poverty among refugees. More boys are put to work and more girls are married off young to ease the financial burden on their families as the war drags on and refugees’ savings run out, aid officials say.
Overall, child labour in Jordan has doubled over the past decade, with refugees making up a significant contingent, according to a recent government report. More than half the Syrian children between the ages of 15 and 17 are out of school, it said.
In the northern city of Irbid, close to the Syrian border, Ghozlan, a mother of six, still hasn’t heard if her three school-age children will get an education. Her 8-year-old daughter Haneen completed first grade in Jordan. But then the family moved to a different neighbourhood in Irbid where there was no room for her in the school, said Ghozlan.
The boys, 14-year-old Aghiyad and 12-year-old Mohammed, completed second and third grade respectively, before fleeing Syria in 2014, but couldn’t get into schools in Jordan. ‘It’s a tragedy,’ she said. ‘My kids can barely write their names. They have forgotten everything. They see the kids go to school and they cry.’
• Meeting in Amman, IndustriALL global union affiliates from Jordan and Iraq came together on 29-30 August to discuss how unions can best confront the problem of low wages in their industries. The challenge to increase wages is one that cuts across industries in Jordan and Iraq.
In Jordan, prices have increased considerably but wages have not kept pace. A tripartite wages committee sets the minimum wage at national level, but the Jordanian King takes the final decision. While the lowest wages are those earned by textile and garment workers and workers in industries such as potash, phosphate and cement earn more, the absence of an adequate plan by the government to deal with the economic situation means that unions need to engage with government on a more sustainable industrial policy in order for wages to increase.
In Iraq, the minimum wage is set by the government. There is no collective bargaining in the public sector, which covers more than 75 per cent of workers. The private sector minimum wage is US$200 per month and is set by a tripartite committee. Enforcement is a major problem and there are many demonstrations over unpaid wages.
The oil industry is very profitable, but Iraqi oil workers are paid less than their counterparts in neighbouring countries and the wages are not proportionate to the risks workers take. Eighty-five per cent of Iraq’s revenue is from oil. As in Jordan, a more sustainable industrial policy is needed to ensure that workers benefit properly from their country’s production. Affiliates discussed what strategies they could adopt to develop a better climate for wage increases.
Garment workers in Jordan have taken a significant step with the development of industry-wide collective bargaining covering 62,000 workers of whom 45,500 are migrant workers. The first agreement was signed in April 2013 after 12 months of negotiation and brought immediate benefits, including reducing disputes and increasing compliance. In 2012 there had been 42 strikes in the sector, but in the 12 months after signing the agreement this reduced to 12.
Moreover, the agreement provides a standardised set of conditions that all parties – government, unions and buyers – are able to measure compliance against. The agreement serves as a useful model for the implementation of the ACT agreement between IndustriALL and global garment brands as it demonstrates that industry-wide bargaining in this sector is both possible and beneficial, says the global union.
The Jordanian agreement covers approximately 60,000 workers, 70 per cent of whom are migrant and 70 per cent are women, and all employers in the export garment industry. In 2015, the agreement was renewed following six months of consultations with workers in the factories to enable their inputs to the negotiations, which this time took four months.
In the mining industry in Jordan, affiliates take a different approach as union strength is such that they are able to bargain at enterprise level and use each agreement as leverage for the next. In Iraq, where politicians are in control of decision-making on wages, the unions are working hard to have workers’ voices heard among many stakeholders.
This involves engaging in lobbying and a media strategy to influence the political process, as well as working with members and union leaders to improve their understanding of their rights.