The World Economic Forum is known to deal with some of the most urgent global issues.
With the refugee crisis currently at the center of attention,... proper education for the
young refugees is emerging as an issue.
Our Kwon Soa reports from Davos.
The refugee crisis,... especially Syrian is becoming an international problem,... that
cannot be ignored any longer.
"Many refugees live life as a refugee for more than 17 years.
So addressing refugee crisis requires coordinated work of providing education, health services,
helping them find jobs, helping them maintain family, and helping them design long-term
livelihood.
So we need to have creative ideas from the private sector to help governments address
these issues."
"A day in the life of a refugee"... an experience session at the Davos forum.
Child trauma specialist Alexandra Chen has been working with the forcibly dispatched
in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia,... and knows the struggles the refugees have endured.
"You are homeless, document-less, right-less, and often dignity-less in a country that doesn't
welcome you, that doesn't want you,... and as a child often you become the target of
abuse.
The hardest thing,... something not everyone likes to talk about is,... the sexual abuse.
I had a 13-year-old girl come up to me once saying: "Miss can you please tell me how not
to get pregnant… because she had already decided herself that she would prostitute
herself in order for her family to survive."
"Not only is it a huge problem that millions of refugees cannot go back to school, but
it must also be a challenge for teachers to educate traumatized children."
"Absolutely, I think there are two challenges.
After every war, every crisis we hurriedly put children back into schools, because we
want them to be educated.
And for a good reason.
But we forget these children are not the same children, and yet we put them in the same
schools.
So that's why something gets lost, because the children have suffered and then continue
to suffer psychologically, and without the psychological support,
for the trauma that they experienced and the toxic stress they experience every day they
can't focus in the classroom.
Ideally ideally we combine education and the mental health fields together so that we have
school counselors we have social workers we have psychotherapists who can support the
teachers as well.
Stand-up) "The refugee crisis is a huge issue being
dealt with at the World Economic Forum this year,… and for a good reason."
With the world's richest and most powerful leaders gathered in one small town,... it's
the perfect setting to raise the awareness and call for help.
That's what six speakers took the opportunity to do at a press conference titled "How can
we secure access to education for 1 million refugees."
"Less than two percent dedicated to humanitarian spending goes to education.
So this is a global challenge, but of course it is focused on Syria and surrounding countries."
The former UK Prime Minister and current UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon
Brown appealed to world leaders and business tycoons for a 2-hundred-50 million U.S. dollars
fund in the next two weeks.
"We've got to persuade countries around the world to add to what the European union and
other countries are going to offer,… and make sure the funding is available for million
places."
2-point-8 million Syrian children are no longer attending school.
Speakers warned that without education, an entire generation was at risk of being lost.
Kwon Soa, Arirang News, Davos.