In total, around 206 UN Volunteer teachers were deployed over the course of 3 school years, to provide quality, inclusive and equitable education services to both 31,231 Palestinian refugee children already living in Lebanon and 5,318 Palestinian refugee children who newly arrived from Syria. The support of UN Volunteer teachers was extended to UNRWA schools for the academic years 2016-2017 and 2017-2018.

Education is one of six themes at the centre of the GRF, critical to the support of refugees and the countries that host them. The Spotlight Session focused on tertiary education for refugees, through a conversation about how barriers are being overcome, how interventions are improving the quality or expanding the quantity of opportunities available, and ultimately, how higher education pathways can support self-reliance and solutions for refugees.

Since 1950, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has been working to ensure recognition of the rights of five million refugees in the Near East. Among them are over half a million children who continue to receive quality education.

In its Global Trends report, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reports that there were 68 million forcibly displaced persons in the world at the end of 2017, half of whom were under the age of 18. People leaving their homes for the unknown, in hope of finding a safer and more secure future, are often triggered by the ravages of war, famine, political instability and the deleterious effects of climate change.

An international meeting of United Nations representatives is underway today and tomorrow, January 23-24, in Helsinki to discuss and agree on a comprehensive relief plan to provide aid in strife-torn Syria. UN Volunteers are an essential part of the response to this humanitarian crisis.  Highly qualified and largely from developing countries themselves, they provide relief and ensure the delivery of basic social services to refugees, as well as their host communities, and promote peace-building.

Rachel Ahmed Saadi is a UN Volunteer English Teacher with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Lebanon.

How does the recruitment of UN Volunteers add value to UNRWA? As an efficient, speedy and diverse talent solution for UN partners, UN Volunteers serve with UN entities to bring people to the forefront of development, peace and humanitarian issues. UNV manages a pool of over 350,000 talented and qualified UN Volunteers who can be deployed to bolster the delivery of UNRWA’s programmes and support the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.