Pam Tannous – Pike & Hurricane

Youth in Action

Pam Tannous — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 13:09:14 +0000

17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted on the 25th of September, 2015 with the aim of transforming our world by 2030 by ending poverty, protecting the environment, and ensuring prosperity for all. However, for this to be possible, everyone needs to do their part; the governments, private sectors, civil society and, most importantly, ordinary citizens of the world. Realizing their roles in helping shape a better community, more than 50 youth leaders decided to start implementing the goals by presenting innovative and sustainable projects targeting gender equality, economic empowerment, social cohesion, and good governance in a regional workshop held in Kuwait.

According to the United Nations Development Program, the goals represent the international community’s response on today´s global development challenges and were adopted to guide our development priorities for an entire generation. Focusing on the Arab region, there are several problems and challenges which require immediate attention such as the population growth and its impact on economic development resulting in unemployment. Other problems in the region are also associated with social cohesion, good governance, and gender equality where social indicators and gender statistics reveal that women in the Arab region are on average more disadvantaged economically, politically, and socially than are women in other regions meaning that they suffer from social exclusion and having limited access to natural resources, economic and political opportunities.

From the UNDP fast facts sheet, today’s generation of adolescents and young people (between 10 and 24 years old) is close to 1.8 billion – more than at any other time in history – approximately 90% of whom live in less developed countries. As this is the case, the UNDP partnered with several youths for the implementation of the SDGs; lucky I was one of them . Thus, recognizing the need for youth to shape the future and their knowledge and creativity to essentially realizing the development goals, the Ministry of Youth in Kuwait in partnership with UNDP Kuwait and UNDP Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS) convened a regional workshop on “Youth Action for the 2030 Agenda” in the Arab region that was held from December 14 till December 19, 2016. More than 50 youth from across the Arab region came together to discuss and share innovative ideas in developing their countries, targeting four pillars; social cohesion, gender equality, global governance, and economic empowerment.

Picture 2: The participants at the final presentation session of the workshop.

Fortunately, I was chosen to be one of the youth leaders representing my country Lebanon. The four pillars discussed in the workshop mainly focused on the importance of diversity along with the elements that bring and hold people together in society such as respect, a sense of belonging, participation, inclusion, recognition and legitimacy under social cohesion. The framework of gender equality was referred to through several perspectives. First, the role women play in the working place and the importance of integrating them into a coherent job in which they will have the capability to depend on themselves. Second, the importance of increasing the amount of women in the educational fields of science and technology. Third, empowering women to seek help and protect themselves when they are in danger. The workshop also discussed the importance of good governance and that it should entail processes, decisions and outcomes that sustain natural resources, alleviate poverty and improve the quality-of-life. It also focused on integrating the youth and newly graduates into the working place in order to decrease unemployment and brain drain which is the departure of educated or professional people from one country, economic sector, or field for better living pay and living conditions. This workshop brought together a diversity of thoughts and cultures to share the difficulties of living in a society where change is needed.

As a participant representing Lebanon, it was evident that not only do we share the same political and societal problems as the rest of the ten Arab countries but we also share the same desire to change and end corruption. As a generation that fights for gender equality, human rights, and justice we decided to act rather than watch. The workshop was an inspiration to contribute to a better society by improving our understanding on leadership and strengthening our initiatives and ideas by implementing, advocating and acting on the development goals.

All youth leaders that participated in this workshop now hold the ability to make a change in his/her community and in the Arab region. This is because at the end of each day, sessions were given to the participants where they had the chance to talk and discuss their projects directly with UNDP focal points, UN Women, and several NGOs and professors in the field of development. The importance of those sessions was that each person had the chance to receive specific advice on his or her project directly which made it more interesting and useful for the participants to further develop their ideas and innovations. The projects involved art such as artistic educational training centers, technology such as apps or devices, awareness campaigns, and agricultural perspectives in solving problems of social cohesion, gender equality, good governance, and economic empowerment.

As a participant of this program, my project mainly focused on empowering women to seek help when she feels that she is in danger by connecting professional NGOs and the Lebanese Security Forces to the victim through a device. This project still has a long way to go and is now being researched and will hopefully soon be prototyped. Over the course of working on my project I experienced the importance of taking into consideration the opinion of others and accepting them with an open mind. This project also strengthen me as an individual to contact companies and NGOs for help and knowledge because you always think that people do not have time or do not want to help you. However, it is truly amazing what one can receive when it comes to further knowledge in a particular field. As this workshop gave us the trust and the ability to improve our leadership skills, several projects are now being prototyped, planed, and even implemented in the region with the goal of ending unemployment, discrimination, and bad governance.

This workshop taught me that we as youth should work hand in hand to achieve a world that we dream of because we are not alone, many developing countries are experiencing the same problems and difficulties and thus it is important to share our ideas. The Youth Leadership Program is an experience that truly strengthen you as an individual with a vision of change by giving you all you need as a youth leader and as an asset for development. From this experience I have taken with me many memories and friends for life in different parts of the Arab world. It has also given me the opportunity and enthusiasm to start working for my beautiful country Lebanon which requires a new vision of hope from youth like me.

The goal now is to start fostering an environment that is conducive to tolerance and mutual understanding and where there is mutual trust, diversity is acknowledged and respected, and minorities are included, leading to more stable and resilient societies.

Remember, we are the largest number of adolescents and youth in history. For this reason it is time to make a change and to protect our planet and the next generation to come. At the end, I would like to quote Mr. Ahmad Alhendawi, Secretary-General´s Envoy on Youth who also had a big part in the Youth Leadership Program; “We believe young people are an opportunity, and they are an asset for development, peace and prosperity to their countries.”

By Pamela Tannous

Image Credit:

Picture 2: Cezar Mahmoud, used with permission. (Featured Image)
Picture 1: Cezar Mahmoud, used with permission.
Picture 3: United Nations Development Programme- Arab States Photo stream , licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Living Without Existing

Pam Tannous — Fri, 30 Oct 2015 09:28:03 +0000

Due to self-determination, states have the right to define citizenship within their borders. A person who has no recognised nationality or citizenship is regarded as stateless. Gender inequality, which has undermined women´s dignity and equal status as citizens mostly in Middle Eastern and North African states, has made it difficult and sometimes impossible for women to pass on their nationality to their children. In the case of Lebanon, the inability for women to transfer their citizenship has far-reaching consequences that may result in stateless children.

Only three years ago, just 100 States adhered to the United Nation’s two statelessness treaties: the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. As of today, critical mass on this issue is nearly attainable as the total number of accessions has risen to 144. However, 27 countries, including Lebanon, deny mothers the ability to pass on their citizenship to their children and to a foreign-born husband. Under the current Lebanese law, children can only receive citizenship through their father. Consequently, marriage to a foreign husband and children born to a Lebanese mother and foreign father would not be registered under the Lebanese government.

Today, approximately 76, 000 women are married to non-Lebanese men, making their children foreigners in their own country. As a result, these children are disenfranchised. They are barred from residency permits to remain in their own country, prohibited from working unless they apply for work permits, and are unable to access fundamental government services such as public education and health care.

Battling for citizenship rights, many have attempted to send proposals for new naturalization laws to the Lebanese parliament, but, not only were they never approved, the parliament said they did not receive them . While justifying unfair citizenship laws, the Lebanese government claims that excluding matrilineal citizenship and other jus sanguinis naturalization rights avoids possible sectarian imbalance. This widespread fear of naturalising children and spouses not purely of Lebanese descent, particularly of Palestinian descent, exposes the blatant discriminatory ethos of Lebanese politicians. This is because the government fears multiculturalism and as a result bars greater citizenship rights. The government and others who are against liberalizing citizenship rights argue that by introducing new ethnic minorities to Lebanon may aggravate pre-existing tensions among Lebanese Shias, Sunnis, and Christians. They conclude that granting naturalization to more individuals will lead to an increasingly unstable government and economy that is already pressured.

Today, around 200, 000 men, women, and children, mostly of Palestinian origin, are stateless, although a female family member is Lebanese. The United Nations Refugee Agency considers Lebanon as one of the seven worst countries when it comes to safeguards against statelessness.

Although, to most individuals and governments, citizenship, just like DNA, is a matter of heritage and is something a parent passes to a child without thought or effort. However, every one in seven countries has laws or policies prohibiting or limiting the rights of women to pass citizenship to a child or non-citizen spouse. The U.N. tracks these laws as a part of its work to monitor stateless populations, and particularly children who may become stateless if they cannot acquire nationality from either parent.

The U.N. assumes that citizenship is a basic right for everyone since it is proof of existence and guarantees basic rights to civil, political, and social engagement.

Almost exactly a year ago, in an attempt to end statelessness around the globe, the United Nations launched the UNHCR #IBELONG Campaign to End Statelessness by 2024 and it aims to make citizenship a fundamental right by shining light on this issue to encourage states to reform their naturalization laws.

Most victims of statelessness in Lebanon and the rest of the world are children that are faced with a challenging future in the country where they were born. The #IBELONG campaign created an Open Letter, a 10-point Global Action Plan to End Statelessness by 2024, and a petition that has signatories calling for states like Lebanon to rectify this dire situation. But where are we almost exactly a year after the #IBelong Campaign was launched on November 4, 2014? Citizenship rights are still denied and more individuals are categorized as stateless, with no state to belong to. Moreover, approximately 10 million individuals are stateless around the world and the number escalates as a baby is born stateless every 10 minutes. Although there are more states in adherence to the two United Nations’ statelessness treaties than ever before, progress is glacial.

Lebanon denies women´s rights to transfer her citizenship, but, at the same time, claims to be the most liberalised country in the Middle East. Among others, rampant ethnic tensions and a refugee crisis, the Lebanese government has to balance many issues, but it does not work in their favour to forget about women’s rights and deny them the right to pass on their citizenship to their children and spouses. As the UNHCR Open Letter states: “Ending statelessness would right these terrible wrongs. But it would also strengthen society in countries where stateless people are found, by making it possible to draw on their energy and talents. It is both an obligation and an opportunity for governments everywhere to put an end to this exclusion.” Time will only tell if by 2024 the UNHCR and #IBelong Campaign end statelessness for good.

By Pamela Tannous

Image Credit:

Picture 1: A.h. king licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Picture 2: r. nial bradshaw licensed under CC BY 2.0

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In Search of a Golden Opportunity

Pam Tannous — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 13:32:49 +0000

In search for a better life, at least 146,000 female migrant domestic workers have moved to the UAE expecting a decent and respectful job as a housekeeper. The surge of migrant workers into the Middle East began in the early 1970s, when increased petroleum production brought with it a demand for skilled and unskilled labour. With this, many opportunities in the service sector for female labour expanded and today an estimated seventy-five percent of the UAE’s population are domestic workers. Choosing to leave their families due to a number of economic and social reasons, many immigrants come from Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Life in the UAE may not turn out this glamorous

The golden opportunity that they were looking for turns out to be a place of hell. A report called “I Already Bought You” published by the Human Rights Watch highlights abuses of certain domestic workers in the UAE, focusing on female workers.

On arrival, their employers confiscate their passports and the next day the workers are shocked by the sheer amount of work. Cooking, cleaning, washing clothes and then cooking again is their daily routine without any rest, and when they ask to return back to the agency the answer they get is “I already bought you”, conveniently denying that they are human beings.

Many domestic workers in the UAE describe a range of abuses, which include; physical abuses, verbal abuses, failure of full wage payment to them, long hours of work without rest or days off, denial of adequate food, proper living conditions, and medical care. Some were even brought to the UAE for forced labour or trafficking.

Tired of their daily stress, many try to run away or seek help at a police station, but their pleas are commonly turned down. Instead, they are accused of lying because there is a lack of protection afforded to them under the UAE labour law. The problem is traced back to the “Kafala” (sponsorship) system which creates a tie between migrant workers and their visa sponsors meaning that the migrant workers can’t change employers. This system gives employers great power over employees because it entitles them to cancel their sponsorship only at their own will. This automatically removes the right of a worker to remain in the UAE in case the Kafala System was cancelled, and triggers repatriation procedures. Domestic workers in the UAE have no legal safeguard governing their employment and are thus excluded from the labour law and from the basic protections that the law and other labour policies afford to most other workers.

The Kafala system is not only employed in the UAE but also in other countries, including; Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Gulf Arab states such as Qatar.

The problem is not limited to the UAE

As reported earlier, in Qatar the violations against migrant workers are also very concerning. Hidden from the public, the preparations for holding the World Cup bring with them problems that have been ignored in favour of a successful event. The massive human rights violations that the domestic workers are facing are threatening their lives. The violations are unacceptable since even the basic needs of survival are being violated, such as the need of food, which has left many workers suffering from hunger.

The practice of the Kafala System has received much criticism by human rights organisations. For example, the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery has mentioned that the Kafala system can create extreme dependency, making it impossible for victims of servitude and other slavery-like practices to escape the situation of exploitation.

Due to international criticism, the UAE government has decided on reforms to the labour laws, which were intended to improve the working conditions for migrant workers. The improvements include one day off each week and eight hours of rest in any 24 hours period. However, this is less from what many workers were promised before arriving and far short of international standards.

A slum in Dubai

Contrary to what may be understood, many women who migrate to the Middle East are educated and skilled and are not on the edge of abject poverty. In fact many of these women come from lower-middle class families and take a proactive role in leaving the household in search of work. Although there is a key financial incentive to migrate, many women also do so because they are seeking adventure, independence, training, and upward social mobility. This means that these women are aware of the human rights that should be offered to them as promised and therefore many will attempt to run away or even commit suicide.

Migrating for work can certainly provide an opportunity, but only if the workers’ human rights are respected. Some female domestic workers in the UAE have good and responsible employers, satisfactory working conditions, receive their wages in full and on time and are able to remit money home to their families. Meanwhile, some are facing severe abuses and are in desperate need of help. Therefore it is important to remove the Kafala system or at least improve it since it is the leading cause of many problems and it does not respect basic human rights.

By Pamela Tannous

Image credit:

Picture 1: Crazy Diamond, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

Picture 2: ILO in Asia and the Pacific, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 3 : Christopher Augapfel, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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One Way Ticket to Mars

Pam Tannous — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 17:51:19 +0000

It has long been a dream for many living on Earth to colonize the ‘Red Planet’. Mars has been viewed for many years as a planet close to us with conditions that can possibly support life. With that said, Mars One is now selecting volunteers for an everlasting stay with one way ticket to Mars. Interested in further exploration, Mars One will establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Starting from 2024, crews composed of four volunteers will depart every two years. Therefore, a search for aspiring space explorers began in April 2013 and up until now more than 200,000 have volunteered for getting a one way ticket to mars. This year Mars one have reduced its pool of astronaut candidates to only 100. Eventually, Mars one intends to choose 24 candidates who will have the opportunity to dedicate their life to the mission. Although most people would rather lose a leg than spending the rest of their lives on an isolated and cold planet, many space explorers have volunteered to leave keeping in mind the risks which this lifetime trip holds.
Before the takeoff to Mars, each volunteer will be put through eight years of training and isolated from the rest of the world for a few months. The purpose of this is to test their ability of living in close quarters. After their extreme training, each explorer will be pushed to the limits as it will take up to seven or even eight months to reach Mars. The four astronauts will spend their trip in a very small area, free from all sorts of luxury such as showering.

For someone who doesn’t share the dream this might sound suicidal, but for others it is a dream come true. Dreaming for new refreshing life, the volunteers will have a very normal life once they arrive on Mars where they will be living in more than 200 m2 interior space. The astronauts will be able to shower, sleep on beds, wear regular clothes and even harvest and prepare their own food. However, if they want to leave the settlement, they would have to wear a specially designed for the environment suit, as mentioned by the Mars One team.

To make life as normal as possible prior to the arrival of the astronauts, rovers will do most of the heavy construction work. This will leave the explorers with a short period of time to find their own routine and carry out valuable construction work and research.

While the first crew awaits, the second one, they will apply technology and physical labor to the construction of additional living and working spaces, using local materials. Mars One is working on additional concepts, such as building of tunnels and domes made from compressed Martian soil, which may be able to provide a breathable atmosphere for the astronauts to live in.

As part of their daily life, the astronauts who will be living on Mars, will have to conduct a great amount of research. They will research how their bodies respond and change when living in a 38% gravitational field, and how food crops and other plants grow in hydroponic plant production units. The research will also include extra-settlement exploration of the ancient and current geology on Mars. Also, much research will be dedicated to the determination if life was once present or now exists on Mars. Apart from submitting research reports, astronauts will also be able to share with everyone else on Earth what they find challenging and what they enjoy living on Mars.

In spite of the pros and cons of living on Mars, there are some risks and challenges that the volunteers have to be willing to take. It is not certain whether the flight will make it to Mars, because human space exploration is dangerous on all levels. A little mistake or an accident can result in a large failure, injury or even death. Each system and its backup must function without any problems or else the lives of the astronauts will be put to a great risk. Also carrying out a mission of this magnitude could have a high risk on their health, and moreover, it is hard to solve physical problems with technology. Without gravity the human body could suffer a serious amount of instability such as bone loss (one percent per month), fainting-spells, cognitive problems such as Alzheimer´s like symptoms, weakness and lack of cardiovascular fitness, and also muscle atrophy.

Apart from medical conditions, the volunteers could face weather problems as forecast on Mars is usually dramatic. During the day the temperature can be as warm as 20 C; however, during the night it can drop to -90 C. This huge difference can lead to dust devils and dust storms that can engulf the entire planet for weeks. Another bad aspect of the weather is that the winter temperatures can stay as low as -140 C which can cause the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to freeze and become dry ice.

As it can be concluded, potential astronauts will be facing many risks and challenges on the ‘Red Planet’. By going on this trip they will be giving up on the beauty of Earth such as the oceans, the forests and the mountains, but it will also mean missing the wars and the conflicts. While some might see it as a suicide mission, others see it as an opportunity for much better and peaceful life than the one on our planet Earth.
Exploring Mars is something that interests many people and those who have decided to start a new life on Mars will forever hold a part in our history.

By Pamela Tannous

Image Credit:

Picture 1: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 2: Cyril Rana, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Political Deadlock

Pam Tannous — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 17:58:43 +0000

With 18 different religious views, Lebanon is the most religiously diverse society of any country in the Middle East. Since 1932, no official census has been achieved, reflecting the political sensitivity over the religious balance in today’s Lebanon. Under the 1943 National Pact (a written agreement that laid the foundation of Lebanon as a multi-confessional state), the Lebanese government was structured to include a Maronite Catholic President, a Sunni Muslim Prime Minister and a Shia Muslim Speaker of Parliament.
This structure of power sharing was considered a “confessional democracy”, however today this democracy of faith based power sharing has led to sectarian politics. For this reason, local government reformers now call for the secularisation of the entire political system, but so far they have failed to show how to transform this divided small society into modernity. Changing and rotating the three political leadership spots could be a major change in the Lebanese political history.
Since the failed election in 2014, Lebanon has entered a presidential gap that could threaten its internal security, paralyze its political institutions and weaken its Christian community. The president, who is the head of the state, commander in chief of the armed forces, and the representative of the Christian-Maronite community is now out of the political game.
After the eighteenth failed attempts to elect a president, the power of the president has shifted to the council of ministers, which is headed by a Sunni Muslim. However, no decisions can be made without the approval of all the members of the cabinet. Hezbollah and its allies hold more than one third of the cabinet seats, which is currently the reason for the paralysis of the cabinet and the election of a new president. This is due to the belief that the March 14 alliance is “imposing” a president on the rest of the Lebanese. Instead of solving the issue in a democratic way, Hezbollah and the conservative FPM (Free Patriotic Movement) have decided to boycott the sessions to elect a president.
As a result, Hezbollah currently holds the ultimate control of the political life in Lebanon, and can impose its own agenda within the negotiations of electing a new president. This strategy has the potential to overthrow the government and lead to a shift in the executive powers to the parliament headed by a Shia Muslim. Such movement would leave Lebanon’s Christian community without a representative in the country’s political leadership.
The absence of a president in Lebanon will not only have an effect on Christians within Lebanon, but also on Christian communities across the Levant, many of which have faced and are still facing considerable marginalization in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt. The absence of a Christian president in Lebanon means the absence of the only remaining significant political representation of Christianity in the Levant.
Concerned about the delay of Lebanon’s presidential elections, the United Nations Security Council issued a statement that read: “The Council urges the Parliament to uphold Lebanon’s longstanding democratic tradition and to work to ensure that presidential elections take place as soon as possible and without external interference.” This is important since Lebanon`s Christians do not have the regional backing that the country’s Sunni and Shia have with Saudi Arabia and Iran as their regional guardians. Therefore an intervention by regional or international powers would not reflect the best interest of the Christian community in Lebanon.
Working to solve the issue of presidential gap in the favor of the Christians, there is still a promised meeting between the leaders of the two largest Christian parties in Lebanon, The Lebanese Forces and The Free Patriotic Movement. This meeting will be held in order to discuss and hopefully solve the problem of presidential deadlock.
The two parties are optimistic about the outcome of the meeting and believe that it will be successful. However, if the talks fail to restore the balance of power in Lebanon, the political system might collapse at the expense of the Christian community.
It remains to be seen what the future holds for the Christians in Lebanon, whether they are able to get back in the political game or not.

By Pamela Tannous

Image Credit:

James Gallagher, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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Lebanon Under Pressure

Pam Tannous — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 22:55:50 +0000

The current situation in Syria is the most dangerous and complex humanitarian crisis in recent history, contributing to the fastest growing refugee rate ever recorded. To escape the state of war, Syrian refugees have been crossing Lebanese borders in search of asylum. According to an estimate by the UNHCR, the Syrian refugee population may reach 1,5 million by the end of 2014.

Struggling to keep up with a crisis that shows no signs of slowing down, Lebanon has become the country with the highest per-capita concentration of refugees worldwide. This has led to huge pressure on the state with regard to the provision of schooling and education. The country of 10,452 km²now hosts refugees which comprise 25 percent of the population meaning that every fourth person in Lebanon today is a Syrian refugee.

At the beginning of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, while noting that Lebanon did not sign the 1951 UN refugee convention, the Lebanese government opened its borders and schools to Syrian refugees. The opening of borders facilitated the cooperation between refugees and the Lebanese government but the government still refuses to build formal refugee camps, fearing that they will become a permanent part of the landscape.

The international community has noticed that the impact on Lebanon has been immense; putting education under pressure and creating challenges. The refugee surge in Lebanon has created an education crisis affecting Syrian, Palestinian, and impoverished Lebanese children.

More than half of the Syrian refugees are children between the ages of five and seventeen. This has caused classrooms to become overcrowded, putting the national education system under considerable strain, resulting in overburdened classes, which has a negative impact on classroom performance.

Due to the long waiting list to attend Lebanese public schools, the ministry of education in Lebanon believed that the only solution was to open afternoon classes for Syrian refugees, as the budget does not allow for the attendance of the large number of Syrian refugee children and teachers during the morning and evening schedules.

Lebanese local public schools lack both the capacity and resources to accommodate the large increase in school-aged children. With that said, and in spite of difficulties, around 57,000 Syrian refugee children have access to the second shift of classes, for an easier and better level of education. This has made it easier for Syrian refugee children since they have faced language barriers in the first shift, as the Lebanese curriculum is taught in English and French.

More than 2,500 teachers have also been trained to give teachers the tools to manage the psychological and educational needs of Syrian refugee students and strengthen educational capacity. Even with these programs expanding, more than 300,000 school-aged children in Lebanon have not enrolled in any form of educational program this school year (2014/2015).

With the growth of new universities and the creation of branch campuses, Lebanon’s higher education sector is probably more divided now, in sectarian affiliation and geography, than at any time in the past. This is due to the Lebanese government’s failure to articulate a coherent policy toward Syrian refugees, making the implementation of effective programs to address the educational crisis more difficult and complicated.
Studies also prove that young Syrian men appear to be seeking residency permits in Lebanon on the basis of their student status. This is for two reasons; firstly, because the student visa is less expensive than the temporary protection visa, and secondly, because pursuing a university education grants them the added benefit of deferment. They would, without student status, be required to serve in the Syrian military.

Schooling and education is a basic right of all children, therefore it is important for all children to get an education whether they are Syrian, Lebanese, or Palestinian. Recognizing the stress on the public school systems, UNICEF has been the head of developing of a strategy entitled ‘No Lost Generation.’
This project seeks to expand national capacity and access to education and protection for host communities, both inside Syria and in neighboring countries, by bridging humanitarian and development responses. The strategy aims to significantly expand formal, as well as non-formal, education in non-traditional settings. This is achieved through the improvement of children’s access to quality education and through the strengthening of the protective environment for children.

Lebanon is struggling to keep up with and protect all refugees in need and, in particular, school aged children. Supporting Lebanon is not only a moral imperative, but it is badly needed for a better schooling and educational system. By working together, for the sake of the children, we can achieve a No Lost Generation.

By Pamela Tannous

Image credit:

Picture 1: Stars Foundation, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 2: DFID – UK Department for International Development, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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