Highlights
• According to the Syrian Ministry of Education (MoE), the school year is planned to start on 16 September. Latest estimates are that 2,072 schools are damaged. Over 600 schools across Syria are being used as shelters for IDPs, but it is reported that more than half of these will be vacated before the start of the school year. UNICEF is supporting the light rehabilitation of 64 schools in Deraa, Rural Damascus and Lattakia.
• The school year in Jordan began this week but Syrian children in Za’atari are not yet attending schools. UNICEF is urgently preparing to establish a school in the camp to cater for the estimated 5,000 children living there.
• In Lebanon, UNICEF and the MoE met with more than 400 school principals in the Bekaa and the North to discuss the inclusion of Syrian refugee children in Lebanese schools.
• Some Syrian refugees in Turkey are sheltered in regional boarding schools, dormitories and gymnasiums, awaiting placement in camps. This is raising public concern as the school year starts on 17 September.
• To date, UNICEF Syria has provided access to 100,000 people to improved hygiene and 6,000 people to drinking water. 27,000 children benefited from psychosocial support; 18,000 children are in remedial education programmes; and 285,000 children were vaccinated against measles. Mobile clinics that will provide healthcare for 175,000 people started on 2 September.
• In the surrounding countries, the number of registered refugees increased by 5 per cent from 184,008 to 193,584; around 97,000 are children and around 39,000 are children below the age of five. This does not include the many tens of thousands of children who are not registered as refugees. Most of the increase in registered refugees came in Lebanon and Iraq.
• In Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon 17,000 children are benefiting from psychosocial support while 19,000 students are in remedial education programmes.
• 3,000 Syrians are currently stranded on the Iraqi side of the Syria-Iraq border, facing acute shortages of food and medicine. UNICEF and other UN agencies are appealing to Iraqi authorities to allow these refugees access to the camps in Al Qaim.