ARAB NEWS
Dr. Azeem IbrahimJanuary 10, 2021
A heartwarming initiative from the creators of “Sesame Street” shows that the international community is finally beginning to understand how to effectively approach the perennial issue of education for refugees. Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that creates the early education TV show, has unveiled Aziz and Noor, two new Muppet characters who are twin brother and sister Rohingya children.
This will be the first time that Rohingya children will have seen anyone like them in a mainstream media production. What is more, the two characters will appear alongside Elmo and other beloved characters in shows in the Rohingya language that are dedicated to topics in math, science and health, among others. This is all part of a curriculum developed by Sesame Workshop, alongside a number of other high-profile charities, specifically for Rohingya children.
It is believed that the majority of the 1 million-plus Rohingya in the camps near Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh are children, and some half a million of them will have never seen the inside of a classroom. The damage being done to them as individuals, and to the Rohingya as a group, every day that these children miss out on a proper education is immeasurable. And no one initiative like this could ever hope to fully plug the gaps. But for this kind of project to be taking place at all is genuinely wonderful, and the approach is simply genius. It is imperative that children of all ages who have been taken out of any kind of normal educational pathway are given at least a basic foundation upon which more traditional educational charities can build — and this will be a solid basis, as well as an item of culture that will bind their generation for the rest of their lives.
The damage being done every day that these children miss out on a proper education is immeasurable.
Dr. Azeem Ibrahim
After the basic physical needs of shelter and food for the refugees have been met, health and education are the next most pressing requirements. There has been a scramble from the Bangladeshi authorities, and especially nongovernmental organizations and UN humanitarian agencies, to provide health facilities throughout the past year, as the specter of the coronavirus disease loomed large over this particularly vulnerable population. But education remains a glaring gap.
One of the most welcome developments on the education front last year was when Bangladesh lifted some restrictions on refugee access to the schooling system in the country, whereby children aged 11 to 13 were allowed to receive proper schooling. The restrictions had been in place for more than 30 years and were motivated by a desire to avoid the permanent integration of refugees into Bangladeshi society, so as to motivate their return to their countries of origin. But, at last, the authorities of the country recognized last year that having a “lost generation” (in their own words) on their hands would not be good for anyone — not for the refugees, of course, but also not for anyone else in Bangladesh. And, as the past few months seem to have shown an increasing recognition among the authorities in the country that the repatriation of the Rohingya to Myanmar is an increasingly distant prospect, education for the refugees will likely become an increasing focus.
- Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a Director at the Center for Global Policy and author of “The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Genocide” (Hurst, 2017). Twitter: @AzeemIbrahim
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