Refugees in Uganda to get an education
Refugee girls living in Uganda will receive education through the UN Foundation’s Girl Up Campaign, making it the sixth country to receive support from UN initiatives that focus on giving adolescent girls a fighting chance.
The UN Girl Up campaign announced the news on Monday and Girl Up campaign director Melissa Hillebruenner Kilby said this initiative was an expansion of its support for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).
Kilby said she was excited that Girl Up’s partnership with UNHCR would play a role in "ensuring refugee girls in Uganda receive a quality education".
She said Uganda was home to 400,000 displaced people, 27 percent of whom were girls under the age of 18. These girls came from a number of countries, with many coming from the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and South Sudan.
Other countries that have benefited from Girl Up campaigns include Guatemala, Ethiopia, India, Liberia, and Malawi.
Kilby emphasised the importance of giving hope to "millions of refugees who have fled their homes in search of a better and safer future".
Education was one of these critical issues that needed to be addressed as refugees sought better lives in the countries they entered.
"Access to education is a basic human right, and all girls should have the chance to go to school. Girl Up is supporting UNHCR’s work in Uganda to help ensure refugee girls have the same chance at an education as their male counterparts. With our partners at the UN – and our community of passionate girl advocates – we are aiming to break the cycle of generational poverty for some of the most vulnerable girls in Uganda," said Kilby.
In Uganda, she said a "lack of quality teachers, poor infrastructure, inadequate safe-learning environments, and insufficient awareness about the importance of education have led to severely low school enrollment rates for adolescent refugee girls across Uganda".
She said the benefits of providing education to young girls was that "girls who complete primary and secondary education are likely to earn more income, have fewer unwanted pregnancies, and break the cycle of poverty for themselves and their families".
She noted that statistics showed that an extra year of primary school boosted girls’ eventual wages by an estimated 10-20 percent, while an extra year of secondary school boosted this by 15-25 percent."