Away from home: Refugee school closed down on ‘discriminatory grounds’

UNHCR’s move will deprive 350 students, say teachers.

PESHAWAR:

Around 350 Afghan refugee students, including a hundred girls, are compelled to stay at home after United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNCHR) Mattani camp middle school closed down despite a furore over the move. The school, code numbered 170, was run by the Basic Education for Awareness, Reforms and Empowerment, also called Basic Education for Afghan Refugees (BEFARe).

A Pak-Afghan Teacher Association Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (PATA K-P) member requesting anonymity disclosed that the district administration had decided to shift the refugees from Mattani and Jabba Jail camps to Garhi Chandan in February, citing that the occupied land belongs to security forces. Interestingly, two schools were situated in the camp but only this one was closed down, he added.



“The teachers have been transferred to other refugee camp schools,” PATA K-P President Nasrullah Khan told The Express Tribune. He mentioned that the BEFARe administration was ordered to find alternate premises for the school.

Attempts to relocate

“The act is discriminatory,” a schoolteacher complained, adding that the school had functioned for nearly thirty years.

The teacher said that a delegation met UNHCR officials and suggested alternative premises for the school, as asked initially, but UNHCR refused to relocate the school and decided to close it down for good on October 24. Meanwhile, the agreement for the school expires in December. He said that over 300 students will suffer directly and there are little alternatives for them since other schools do not follow the Afghan curriculum and syllabi.

Parents complained that the admission rounds in schools have already finished and their children are forced to stay at home.

On the flipside

A UNHCR official requesting anonymity told The Express Tribune that the deadline for finding alternative premises was given in February but the matter was not taken seriously back then. He informed that the issue has already been taken up with the Commissionerate Afghan Refugees (CAR) that disallowed the school to continue |to function.



Another official from BEFARe explained that it is not the mandate of UNHCR to maintain the school. The contract for the school and the staff ends soon and hence the transfers have been made. He disclosed that the security forces have informed it via BEFARe to vacate the premises once annual examinations are over, adding that the deadline was for August.

“We are helpless since we are implementation partners only,” the official said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2014.