Reduced UN funding risks refugee youth’s education

NAIROBI, Kenya — Cuts to U.N. funding for refugees living in Rwanda is threatening the right to education for children in more than 100,000 households who have fled conflict from different East African countries to live in five camps.

A Burundian refugee, Epimaque Nzohoraho, told The Associated Press on Thursday how his son’s boarding school administrator told him his son “should not bother coming back to school,” because UNHCR had stopped paying his fees.

Nzohoraho doesn’t know how much the U.N. refugee agency had been paying, because funds were directly paid to the school, but he had “hoped education would save his son’s future.”

Last weekend, UNHCR announced funding cuts to food, education, shelter and health care as hopes to meet the $90.5 million in funding requirements diminished.

UNHCR spokesperson Lilly Carlisle said only $33 million had been received by October, adding “the agency cannot manage to meet the needs of the refugees.”

Rwanda hosts 134,519 refugees — 62.20% of them have fled from neighboring Congo, 37.24% from Burundi and 0.56% from other countries, according to data from the country’s emergency management ministry.

Among those affected is 553 refugee schoolchildren qualified to attend boarding schools this year, but won’t be able to join because of funding constraints. The UNCHR is already supporting 750 students in boarding schools, Carlisle said. The termly school fees for boarding schools in Rwanda is $80 as per government guidelines.

Funding constraints have also hit food cash transfers, which reduced from $5 to $3 per refugee per month since last year.

Chantal Mukabirori, a Burundian refugee living in eastern Rwanda’s Mahama camp, said with reduced food rations, her four children are going hungry and refusing to go to school.

“Do you expect me to send children to school when I know there is no food?” Mukabirori asked.

Carlisle is encouraging refugees to “to look for employment to support their families,” but some say this is hard to do with a refugee status.

AP PHOTO/SAYYID AZIM In 1997, Ndirubwidana Jean, a malnourished two-year-old Hutu refugee, waits at Kigali airport for registration with his father, whose leg was badly hurt, after they were airlifted from Kisangani, Zaire.