Delivering on Our Global Refugee Forum Pledges in 2024

We have supported refugee education since 2000 when we began providing temporary learning spaces to Chechen refugees during the Second Chechen War.

Today, we work with local education actors and communities to respond to sudden onset and protracted crises and strive to ensure the continuity of education and improved access to wellbeing support for all children.

We support refugee education in the Czech Republic, Georgia, and Moldova as part of our Ukrainian refugee response and in Iraq as part of our Syrian refugee response. We recognise that learning and holistic development require children’s diverse needs to be met; we therefore work across formal and non-formal education, prioritise wellbeing and promote an integrated cross-sectoral approach to ensure that all children are safe, well and learning within a supportive environment.

At the Global Refugee Forum (GRF) in December 2023, we pledged to support the provision of education for refugee children through alignment with multi-stakeholder pledges on Education in Emergencies (EiE) and the integration of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) into education. One year into the four-year pledge period, we have provided EiE and MHPSS to children and teachers in the Czech Republic, Georgia, Iraq and Moldova, delivering on over 100% of our EiE pledge and exceeding our MHPSS pledge by reaching 157% of our target.

Pledges

1. Short-term action for long-term benefit: promoting rapid access to learning opportunities for recently displaced refugee children and youth

We are committed to supporting the EiE Multi-Stakeholder pledge. As such, we seek to ensure a rapid return to learning for refugees and to expand access to protective, inclusive, quality education for both refugee children and host communities through:

• Collaboration with Ministries of Education (MoE), Education Working Groups and local education actors to identify and remove policy, legal, and administrative barriers to allow the swift inclusion of refugee children and youth—in all their diversity—into national education systems. We are active in education groups in Iraq and Moldova which identify barriers to education, such as documentation, for refugees and collaborate on removing these barriers.

• Strengthening the capacity of education systems to absorb a higher demand. This also includes ensuring adequate support for teachers, raising awareness about the needs of displaced children and considering how to incorporate refugee teachers effectively. In the Czech Republic, we train Ukrainian teaching assistants through online courses to improve their knowledge of the Czech language and the Czech education system to help Ukrainian students attending Czech schools.

• Promotion of sustainability and inclusion from the start of a response. Even if recently arrived children and youth cannot join schools in their host communities immediately, our response is developed to integrate them in national systems as soon as possible—using non-formal pathways, when needed. In Moldova, we provide Romanian language classes for Ukrainian refugee children to enable their future integration into the Moldovan education system.

• Aligning emergency phase responses and longer-term policy and planning to create the conditions to include refugee children and youth in national education systems. In Iraq, we provide to support their integration in line with the MoE’s Refugee Education Integration Policy.

• Prioritising and integrating education in inter-sectoral responses—refugees may need support services that include addressing economic barriers to education, psychosocial support (PSS), assistance to learn the language of instruction and bridging curricular and cultural differences. In Georgia, we provide learning materials and integrated PSS for refugee children enabling them to integrate into Georgian schools.

• Meaningfully engaging and empowering local actors, teachers, affected children and youth and their families to be part of the decision-making and accountability processes. In Iraq, school headteachers play a crucial role in the decision-making processes for school improvements, enabling a safer school environment.

• Investing in evidence generation on how children and youth learn in emergency contexts, and what works to support their learning and development. In Moldova, we participate in joint assessment initiatives to generate evidence on the learning needs of Ukrainian refugee children which forms the basis of our education programming.

2. Promoting MHPSS + SEL to enable education outcomes for refugee, displaced and host community children and youth

We are committed to supporting the MHPSS + SEL in Education Multi-Stakeholder pledge. As such we promote MHPSS + SEL in national education systems for refugee, displaced and host community children and youth by committing to:

• Strengthening referral systems to ensure that every school (including formal and non-formal) has a well-defined process to identify and refer individuals to locally available mental health and psychosocial support services. All our education programming for children includes a robust referral system aligned to either national or cluster/working group referral systems ensuring refugee children have access to specialised services.

• Investing in specialised MHPSS focal points and/or counsellors at the school-level to ensure teachers are not expected to take on the role of trained mental health care providers. In Moldova, we provide individual and group counselling support to children in our digital learning centres and child friendly spaces.

• Investing in the training of those involved in the care and support of learners to enhance their capacity to deliver inclusive, gender-responsive and age appropriate MHPSS and SEL interventions. In Georgia and Moldova, we have trained local child friendly space facilitators in SEL using the IRC Safe and Healing Learning Spaces approach.

• Strengthening policies and programmes that promote and protect teacher mental health and psychosocial wellbeing. This includes investing in initiatives that specifically target the MHPSS needs of those involved in the care and support of learners during crisis. In Iraq, we provide training on teacher wellbeing using the Teaching in Crisis Contexts Curriculum for teachers who are supporting Syrian refugees in Kurdish schools.

• Designing and delivering MHPSS + interventions that promote equity and inclusion, with specific consideration to the needs of the most marginalised members of refugee and host communities. In Moldova and Georgia, our MHPSS programming trains facilitators on inclusive principles and approaches to enable them to better cater to the needs of marginalised groups and include them in programme activities. MHPSS activities are open to all children in the target areas, including both refugee and host communities.

For more information on People in Need’s pledges or work in these areas contact: