The Covid-19 pandemic has taken 1.6 billion students out of classrooms around the globe. Although students everywhere are struggling to access education during the pandemic, the problem is especially exacerbated for girls. Girls in lower-income countries face unique challenges both in getting to school and in staying enrolled. These challenges include everything from lack of funding, to sexist norms about girls’ education, to outright gender-based violence.
And it is even worse for refugee girls. Refugee children in general are disadvantaged, with only 61% of refugee children having access to primary school education compared to the global average of 91%. However, in large refugee-hosting countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia, there are only seven refugee girls for every ten refugee boys in primary school. The problem of accessing education for this population is not new, but it is worsening during the pandemic, threatening to reverse the recent progress that has been made in educational gender parity.
Refugee girls face a unique intersection of obstacles to obtaining an education, both as females and as displaced people. They face both the systemic discrimination, limiting gender norms, and outright violence that girls face globally, and also the lack of economic resources, lack of access to healthcare, and again, violence, that refugees face. These obstacles only get worse as refugee girls grow. As girls get older, their school costs rise, they face greater risk of sexual assault or other gender-based violence, and they are often assigned disproportionate amounts of housework compared to their male peers.