Access to Secondary Education in Refugees and IDP Camps in North Eastern Part of Nigeria: Challenges and Opportunities

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume IV, Issue VI, June 2020 | ISSN 2454–6186

Access to Secondary Education in Refugees and IDP Camps in North Eastern Part of Nigeria: Challenges and Opportunities

Abubakar Suleiman¹, Luka Yelwa Barde², Shehu A Sabo³, Sunusi Shettima^4
1,3,4Umar Suleiman College of Education Gashua, Yobe State, Nigeria
²African Centre of Excellence for Neglected Tropical Diseases and Forensic Biotechnology

Abstract: This paper examined the challenges children and young people experienced in accessing secondary education in refugees and IDPs camp and its opportunities in north-eastern Nigeria. The paper analysed that distance, poverty, documentation, language difference among refugees and cultural norms are some of the main problem facing IDPs and refugees’ children and youths especially the girl-child. The paper concluded that government need to make adequate planning and recommendation for refugees and IDPs, provision of all the necessary educational facilities, feasibilities in the inclusion of vulnerable refugees, identification of problems and budgetary planning. The paper also recommended that government and humanitarian actors should make effective measures in addressing barriers that will affect the learning outcome of displaced children to school drop-out, the host country should enable refugees to engage in legitimate work to avoid child labour, provision of vocational and technical training skills should also be considered, among others. The paper used secondary sources of data collection.

Keywords: Challenges, children, youths, school, education, north-east, problems, refugees, camps etc.

I. INTRODUCTION

Rose and Greeley argue that special attention to post-primary education is vital in reducing the risk of the fragility of any nation, by given attention to youths (especially disaffected youth) and encourages robust national framework by supporting post-basic education for the successful development of economic, social and recovery of a nation (2011). In Nigeria, refugees and IDPs children find it very difficult to access post-primary education (especially children from the North-Eastern part). Even though according to the convention of the right of the child (CRC), 1951 convention on the status of refugees (CSR), 1948 Universal Declaration of Fundamental Human Right (UDFHR) all agreed on no discrimination, free education, compulsory education and right to emergency education for all children irrespective of status (Olaitan, 2016).

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