As we confront an increasing number of
conflicts around this globe, education has got to remain a very key
component of U.S. foreign assistance. Around the world today, there are 27 million children who are out of
school in conflict zones. Half of all children in refugee camps do not
have access to primary education. With many recent conflicts that have lasted, now, a decade, we are
now seeing entire generations of children that fail to receive even the
most basic education; and even if they are eventually able to return
home, they carry back those deficits in terms of what they have not
learned, and those deficits can last a lifetime. So this is a
humanitarian crisis with real strategic implications. In Syria, for example, an estimated 4 million children are out of
school in an environment warped by constant violence. Refugee children
outside of Syria are placing tremendous strains on the educational
systems, and I have seen this in countries like Jordan, in Lebanon, in
Turkey. As we have seen in crisis situations around the world, the lack of
stable educational opportunities make these children more vulnerable:
more vulnerable, especially for girls, to exploitation; more
vulnerable, especially for boys, to radicalization. Girls face unique barriers to education in conflict zones.
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