Save the Children has released a new report titled “The Price of Hope: Funding education for the world’s refugee children,” which highlights the current state of education for refugees in 2023. The report assesses the progress made since the 2019 Global Refugee Forum and examines the impact of events like the COVID-19 pandemic on refugee education.
A significant focus of the report is the financial support required to ensure access to education for refugee children. It presents analysis showing that in 2020, four out of 14 top low- and middle-income refugee-hosting countries spent more on servicing external debt than on education, accounting for almost one-third of these countries. Moreover, low- and middle-income countries among the top 20 refugee-hosting nations paid over $23 billion in interest payments for external debt alone in 2020. This amount would be sufficient to send every refugee child in low- and middle-income countries to school for nearly five years.
The report calls on the international community to come together at the 2023 Global Refugee Forum to detail how they will work with refugee hosting governments to mobilise the funding needed to fill the financing gap to meet the annual US$4.85 billion cost of providing education to refugee children.
