Education and the Palestinian refugees of Lebanon: A lost generation?
Source: Refugee Participation Network 21 (April
1996) by Lina Abu-Habib
Background
In 1948, the first wave of Palestinian refugees arrived
in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt to seek what was
thought to be a temporary refuge. A second exodus,
mainly to Jordan, followed in 1967 as a result of
the defeat of Arab armies during the third Arab-lsraeli
war. In 1970/71, thousands of Palestinian refugees
fled from the civil war in Jordan to Lebanon. At present,
the total estimated population of Palestinian refugees
in the Arab world is about two million. According
to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA),
320,000 reside in Lebanon. This number is contested
and estimates vary between 250,000 to 400,000.
In Lebanon, Palestinians were housed in refugee
camps, and their care was mandated to a specially
formed temporary UN body, the UNRWA. Refugee status
varied greatly according to the host country. In Jordan
and Syria refugees enjoyed rights comparable to those
of Jordanian and Syrian citizens and had access to
state services and benefits. In Lebanon, Palestinians
were granted a status of temporary refugees with
fewer rights and limited access to services, while
responsibility for their welfare lay with UNRWA. However,
only registered Palestinians living inside or in the
proximity of official camps were eligible for, or
had access to, UNRWA services. Palestinians in Lebanon
were denied work permits and hence the right to work
in the country. In the early seventies, before the
start of the Lebanese civil war, Palestinian workers
constituted a substantial pool of illegal, unskilled
labour in construction, agriculture and factories.
In the early days, UNWRA was also an important employer,
counting on its pay roll several hundred Palestinian
men and women in different clerical, technical, professional,
and managerial jobs.
Until the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the
Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) had been a
major employer and provider of social services to
Palestinian refugees. It is estimated that the PLO
absorbed around 10,000 full-paid soldiers and militia
men from among Palestinian refugees. It also employed
several thousand persons in its politico-social infrastructure.
This situation, along with remittances received from
Palestinians working in the Gulf countries, ensured
a relatively stable minimum livelihood for most refugee
families.
Inevitably, Palestinian refugees be came enmeshed
in the Lebanese war (1975-1990), triggering antipathy
from different sections of the Lebanese population.
Shrinking provisions
As of 1985-86, the socio-economic situation of the
Palestinian refugee population started to deteriorate
dramatically as a result of the combined effect of
sieges and persecution coupled with the general collapse
of the Lebanese economy. This was exacerbated in 1990-91
by the Gulf crisis, resulting in the expulsion of
tens of thousands of Palestinian workers from Gulf
countries and severance of substantial financial aid
to the PLO from Arab oil countries. Prior to this
the PLO had already laid off numbers of military and
civilian cadres; vast majority of these were young
males in their teens with limited skills. This particular
group posed a critical problem, and continues to do
so. Released en masse in refugee camps, there
was little productive activity that they could under
take, and after years of living as fighters, their
social integration was a challenge for their communities.
UNRWA provides primary education for the population
of officially registered camps. Secondary education,
a prerequisite for access to university, was never
considered to be within UNRWA's temporary mandate.
Until 1982, the PLO used to fill this gap by running
secondary schools and by securing university scholar
ships in Lebanon and other sympathetic countries.
This PLO policy contributed to ensuring a high level
of educational attainment amongst young Palestinian
men and women, until the mid 1980s. With the collapse
of the USSR and the expulsion of Palestinians from
Arab Gulf countries, as well as the closure of most
PLO institutions following the PLO's forced departure
from Lebanon in 1983, access to secondary and higher
education became increasingly difficult.
In the 1980s, at a time when extra capacity was
needed to absorb an increasing number of uneducated
and unemployed youth, UNRWA started facing financial
difficulties. The quality and extent of its services
had to be gradually reduced, particularly health care
and education provision. Distributions of food rations
and daily meals to nursery schools and social centres
were also run down.
Under
these circumstances, very few options were left for
providing education to adolescents. UNRWA schools
were unable to meet growing demand and increase in
population size. Budgetary cuts meant fewer classrooms
had to cater to a higher number of students; in addition,
parents had to meet part of the schooling costs, which
proved to be prohibitive in most cases. Access to
Lebanese schools remained extremely limited due to
cost, distance, or both. With little and/or poor schooling,
most Palestinian youths were unable to progress to
further technical or academic education. Drop-out
rates in creased affecting girls more than boys, as
investment in education of girls is considered a lesser
priority. The remaining option, that of technical
education or vocational training, is also limited
in scope. UNRWA runs a technical institute with places
for only a few hundred students every year. Other
outlets for technical education are the private sector
and NGOs. The private sector provides technical education
of varying quality and cost, accessible to only a
small number of refugees, so that vocational and training
programmes provided by NGOs remain the most popular
option. Unfortunately, very few programmes appear
to be responding to local demand. In fact, development
workers have observed that, particularly in the case
of young women, vocational training in 'traditionally
feminine skills' such as sewing and hairdressing is
unlikely to lead to an economically productive activity
or an improvement in status. Short-term vocational
training for young men has a slightly better prognosis
especially in the case of specific construction skills
due to the construction boom and the demand for cheap
labour. Still, the impact of foreign-funded vocational
training programmes is far from satisfactory when
looking at economic and social benefits and improvements.
[Picture above:VDSA vocational training at Bourj
al-Barajneh refugee camp.]
New approaches
VDSA (Vocational Development and Social Association),
a Palestinian NGO officially created in 1986 and supported
by Oxfam UK and Ireland, the European Union, and other
European agencies, is perhaps among the very few to
consciously depart from the conventional trend of
vocational training and education in its attempt to
address the problems of refugees seeking professional
training and education. After years of running typing
courses for women and men, flower arrangement for
women and plumbing and electrical installations for
men, VDSA realised a number of short falls in this
approach. The market had become over-saturated with
people with similar qualifications and in the case
of more specialised courses (e.g. typing, languages...),
the methods and curriculum were so outdated that students
could not meet the standards required.
Women were particularly disadvantaged in this process.
Whereas men equipped with some training were in most
instances able to find manual work outside the boundaries
of the camp (despite their non-eligibility for work
permits), similar options for women did not exist.
In a growing climate of religious fundamentalism
and conservatism within the Palestinian community,
women were mostly confined to the camps and there
fore had even fewer work opportunities; the number
of offices, hairdressing salons or sewing factories
is fairly limited in refugee camps!
All this convinced VDSA of the need to think through
and adopt a new strategy for vocational training.
Such a strategy would look at the changes in the situation
of the local and regional employment markets, the
outlets available for Palestinians given their current
legal status, the need to challenge traditional gender
roles, and the possibilities for extending support
to graduates in terms of job placement or self employment.
There was also a need to explore uses of vocational
training programmes in promoting refugee rights for
education and employment and actively disseminating
gender awareness.
Although this process is now well under way, its
impact is still limited and offers little long-term
prospect. In the absence of any relaxation of laws
on the employment of Palestinian refugees, very little
can be done to equip them with long term marketable
skills which will ensure sustainable livelihoods.
Still, the efforts of NGOs such as VDSA serve a number
of purposes, such as introducing new and professional
ways of working amongst associations involved with
the Palestin ians. But perhaps the most important
achievement is the challenge that NGOs such as VDSA
and others are introducing as an option to more traditionally
defined gender roles and social relation ships, at
a time when growing conservatism seems to isolate
an already marginalised and impoverished population
even further.
What future?
For those few fortunate young refugees, mostly men,
who do manage to go through mainstream academic education,
the prospect of building a professional career in
Lebanon remains grim, due to the restraints imposed
by employment regulations - a few months ago, a number
of Palestinian physicians were asked to stop working
as it became illegal for them to practice medicine
under the current laws. The main aspiration for most
Palestinian youths wanting to go to university, or
for those who have completed it, is to emigrate to
Scandinavia and other Northern countries, a matter
now made more and more difficult by increasingly xenophobic
immigration laws.
So long as the peace negotiations in the region
are at a standstill, the situation and status of the
Palestinians of the diaspora, most particularly in
Lebanon, remain in limbo. Meanwhile, there is great
reluctance to discuss even their rights to basic services
such as health, employment and education. With so
little investment in education in general, and more
specifically, in secondary education, the level of
skills of the Palestinian refugee population in Lebanon
is likely to decrease even more, jeopardising any
remaining potential for economic independence and
productivity. Especially alarming is the loss in education
for those who are now in their teens. Whatever political
decisions are taken in the future, remedying shortcomings
in education for these generations is going to prove
difficult, and the impact will be a long lasting one.
As for the present, keeping thousands of unskilled
and idle youths trapped in camps by poverty and by
official indecision concerning their status is not
the best way to contribute to a lasting peace in the
region.
Lina Ahu-Hahih is a programme officer with Oxfam
UK and Ireland in Lehanon. She is currently working
with Oxfam HQ's gender and development team, specialising
on the Middle East. |