{"id":26648,"date":"2018-12-23T14:22:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T14:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26648"},"modified":"2018-12-23T14:22:50","modified_gmt":"2018-12-23T14:22:50","slug":"kids-in-iraq-camps-dream-big-but-cant-enroll-in-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26648","title":{"rendered":"Kids in Iraq camps dream big, but can\u2019t enroll in school"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nHAMMAM AL-ALIL 2 DISPLACEMENT CAMP, Iraq: Maareb has big dreams, but she may never get to realize them. Every day, when her friends attend class in the Iraqi displacement camp they call home, she stays behind.
The makeshift primary school in the dusty Hammam Al-Alil 2 camp in Iraq\u2019s north opened earlier this year, but several thousand displaced children are unable to access it.
For Maareb, the problem is paperwork.
\u201cI want to go to school with my friends, but I\u2019m not allowed because I don\u2019t have an ID,\u201d says the seven-year-old, her plaited hair dangling down her back.
\u201cI want to finish my studies to become a doctor.\u201d
Maareb and her family fled to Hammam Al-Alil 2 a few years ago from Zammar, around 90 kilometers (60 miles) west, as the Daesh group overran the region.
At the time, Maareb had proof of birth provided by a hospital, but no government-issued identification. In the violent chaos of IS\u2019s reign, her father could not acquire the necessary papers to secure her a spot in a classroom.
\u201cBecause of our displacement, I was never able to get an ID card for Maareb, so she doesn\u2019t have any paperwork now besides a birth certificate,\u201d says her father, Ibrahim Helo.
Hammam Al-Alil 2 lies in an arid plain just 30 kilometers (20 miles) southeast of Mosul, the historic Iraqi city that became infamous as IS\u2019s de facto capital in the country.
Iraqi security forces retook Mosul last summer, but with no homes to return to, thousands stayed in camps.
Over 1.9 million people remain displaced in Iraq, more than half of them children.
Over the years, Hammam Al-Alil 2 became a bustling settlement: rows of tents with water and electricity access, plus storefronts, playgrounds, and a health center.
But aid groups only established a primary school this year, with five teachers instructing 2,500 kids up to age 10.
That leaves around 5,000 camp children with no schooling, says school principal Ibrahim Khodr, 55.
\u201cThere are many reasons kids can\u2019t attend school,\u201d Khodr says.
\u201cNo documentation due to displacement, no encouragement by parents to finish schooling, tough financial situations, and the fact that families \u2014 especially those without breadwinners \u2014 send their children to work.\u201d
Khodr says education authorities in Nineveh province have pledged to establish a school for older kids.
\u201cWe can\u2019t keep teaching in these circumstances. The Nineveh education directorate and the ministry of education must act to alleviate this suffering.\u201d
Human Rights Watch researcher Belkis Wille told AFP Iraq\u2019s policy of barring school access for undocumented children was \u201cshocking.\u201d
\u201cIraq should be engaging in every effort to reintegrate the hundreds of thousands of families who lived under IS for three years,\u201d she said.
\u201cA key way of ensuring they are brought back into the fold is through putting their children back into Iraqi schools as quickly as possible.\u201d
But even with the right paperwork, school remains too expensive for some families. Abdulkhaliq Julud, 37, cannot afford to educate his five children.
\u201cOur difficult financial situation means I can\u2019t buy what they need for school: clothes, backpacks, notebooks,\u201d says Julud.
\u201cI\u2019m unemployed and we don\u2019t have savings. We live off whatever food aid we get in the camp.\u201d
Iraqi students from poorer backgrounds are much less likely to attend or finish school than wealthier classmates, the United Nations children\u2019s agency (UNICEF) says.
Nineveh in particular has one of the lowest completion rates for primary or secondary schools.
According to UNICEF, 80 percent of Iraqi children have been violently disciplined in their lifetimes.
Across the country, 3 million children don\u2019t have regular access to education. Half of public schools must be repaired and another 7,500 built to accommodate out-of-school kids.
In Nineveh, the education directorate has deployed caravan schools to maximize class time, but is facing its own shortages, too.
\u201cThe directorate is operating with just half its staff, after many were displaced to the Kurdish region or Baghdad and others retired,\u201d says associate head Khaled Jumaa.
The scars from the recent conflict go beyond depleted teaching cadres: in November, unexploded ordnance killed three children in their school bus outside Mosul.
In Hammam Al-Alil 2, children \u2014 some barefoot \u2014 shuffle to ten tents that make up their school. During storms, the torn tarps leak water onto the kids.
There are no desks or chairs. Students are crammed shoulder-to-shoulder on the ground, girls on one side and boys on the other.
Their instructor paces down the aisle in between, trying to explain Iraqi geography without a chalkboard or map.
\u201cOur main river is the Tigris,\u201d he says, helplessly gesturing as confused students looked on, their heads in their hands.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HAMMAM AL-ALIL 2 DISPLACEMENT CAMP, Iraq: Maareb has big dreams, but she may never get to realize them. Every day, when her friends attend class in the Iraqi displacement camp they call home, she stays behind.The makeshift primary school in the dusty Hammam Al-Alil 2 camp in Iraq\u2019s north opened earlier this year, but several…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}