Bridging the Data Gap on the Education of Internally Displaced Children

• In Event: INEE Data and Evidence Collaborative: Education Data for Internally Displaced Persons

Proposal

Data on access to and quality of education for children in emergencies is generally lacking, but even more so for internally displaced children than for children displaced across international borders. This data gap is a key challenge in providing them with adequate support to overcome the educational consequences that often accompany internal displacement.

Internally displaced children are twice invisible in data: First, because data on internal displacement in general is lacking, particularly in disaster settings and in areas that are difficult to access for security or logistical reasons, but also because of the limited statistical resources of affected countries, and sometimes the lack of political will to recognize and address the issue. Second, because when data on internally displaced people (IDPs) is available, it is rarely disaggregated by age. For these reasons, information as basic as the number of internally displaced children worldwide is difficult to obtain. The current figure of 21.3 million IDPs under the age of 18 is likely under-estimated. More detailed information on their educational needs and their ability to access quality education is even more scarce. Nonetheless, options exist to start bridging this knowledge gap and support awareness raising as well as planning and funding for better educational support to internally displaced children. Demographic distribution models can be applied to estimates of the number of IDPs in each country to assess the number of displaced children of primary and secondary school age, and the cost of providing them with education. At the end of 2019, this method identified that nearly 12 million children of primary and early secondary school age worldwide were being affected by internal displacement. More in-depth quantitative and qualitative information must then be collected on their specific experience of displacement and the impacts it has on their education. Primary data collected in the Banadir IDP settlement near Mogadishu in Somalia highlighted for instance that overall, children displaced by drought from rural to urban areas experienced better access to school on average, but digging deeper, the findings showed that it was only true for boys. This presentation will discuss these methodological approaches as well as their latest results in selected internal displacement cases around the world.

Author

• Christelle CAZABAT, IDMC