350,000 Rohingya refugee children to get an education

About 350,000 Rohingya refugee children and teenagers who fled violence in Myanmar are to get a basic education in Bangladesh.

2000 teachers and instructors will also be hired as part of a $25 million funding package announced yesterday by the World Bank.

More than half of the teachers will be female and they will be trained to help girls manage safety concerns.

The funding will also help poor children from the Bangladeshi community get into school in Cox’s Bazar. The city is home to most of the Rohingya refugees who arrived in Bangladesh last year and has the lowest education enrolment rate in the country.

A year after hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children fled from ethnic violence in neighbouring Myanmar, more than 70% of them are out of school.

Over 600,000 Rohingya people left for Bangladesh, where they face an uncertain future in refugee camps. Around 60% of those fleeing ethnic cleansing in Rahkine state have been children. 

The education project – with $21 million from the World Bank and $4 million from Canada – was one of two financing agreements signed by the bank and the Bangladeshi government yesterday. 

The other is a $175 million plan to improve the forest cover in the country’s coastal, hill and central districts.

The sudden influx of Rohingya refugees last year caused the loss of nearly 13,000 hectares of forest. Planting trees will help the country become more climate-resilient and assist host communities through income-generating activities and more availability of wood for fuel.

“Despite its own challenges, Bangladesh generously provided shelter to about a million Rohingya refugees,” said Qimiao Fan, World Bank Country Director for Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.

“The local people, many of whom are poor, welcomed the displaced Rohingya and shared food and resources. But the needs of both the Rohingya and the host community are huge.

“This financing will help the government improve resilience and livelihoods of the host community as well as address the learning and psychosocial needs of Rohingya children and adolescents.”

The additional money for the existing Reaching Out of School Children Project II will provide training to more than 17,000 local adolescents and help them with job placement. 

Since January the project has provided training, employment and enterprise development support to about 8000 local adolescents who have dropped out from school.