‘I Want to Study’: Lebanon Crisis Cancels School for Many

‘I Want to Study’: Lebanon Crisis Cancels School for Many

Syrian refugees say online classes are of little use due to lack of resources - AFP

In a camp for Syrian refugees in east Lebanon, Mohammad and his three sisters fear they will be out of school for a third consecutive year because remote learning is out of reach.

"Look at my phone. How do you expect my son to study on it?" asked his father Abdel Nasser, sitting cross-legged inside the family's tent in the Bekaa Valley.

"The screen is cracked... and I have no internet."

Eleven-year-old Mohammad and his siblings are among tens of thousands of Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian children who have been left for months without schooling due to coronavirus restrictions, AFP reported.

An accelerating economic crisis means they may never return to school in what rights groups are calling an "education catastrophe", especially affecting refugees who already struggled to access learning before the pandemic.

"We can't afford to buy a cellphone for everyone. We must first be able to feed our children," said their mother Shamaa.

Mohammad arrived in Lebanon from Syria in 2012 -- a year into an ongoing conflict that has killed 388,000 people and displaced millions.

But he wasn't enrolled in school until 2019 because Lebanon's public school system didn't