Chopra urges more Syria refugee help
AMMAN: The world must do more to help Syrian refugee children get an education, actress Priyanka Chopra said after chatting and joking with young refugees at an afterschool centre in Jordan’s capital.
Individuals can make a difference with donations if governments don’t step up, said Chopra, a Unicef goodwill ambassador and Bollywood and Hollywood star.
“We need to take it into our own hands because this is our world and we only have one of it,” Chopra said at the end of her first day in Jordan.
“I think the world needs to understand that this is not just a Syrian refugee crisis, it’s a humanitarian crisis.”
Without sufficient support, “this can be an entire generation of kids that could turn to extremism because they have not gotten an education”, she said in an interview on Sunday.
Some five million Syrians have fled civil war in their homeland since 2011, many settling in nearby Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.
The influx has overburdened host countries, including their schools.
More than half a million Syrian refugee children of school age – or one-third of the total – are not enrolled in school or informal education in the host countries.
Meanwhile, UN and aid agencies supporting the refugees routinely face large funding gaps.
On Sunday, Chopra, a light grey scarf slung over her hair, visited a Unicef-backed children’s centre in Jordan’s capital of Amman.
In the centre, pre-teen girls and boys sat around a low table or on the ground, colouring or gluing glitter on paper. Only a few children knew who she was, but easily engaged with her.
A young boy told her he wanted to become an actor. She told him that one of the prerequisites is not to be shy and then challenged him to a staring contest. They locked eyes until she stopped, laughing.
Chopra later said she was moved by the hopefulness of the children she met.
“Some of them want professional careers, some of them want to go back to their countries and rebuild,” she said.
“Parents ... want that for their children.” — AP