ISLAMABAD: The top 20 refugee host nations among low- and middle-income countries, including Pakistan, paid more than $23 billion in interest payments on external debt alone in 2020, reveals a report released on Monday.

The Price of Hope report, released by Save the Children on the eve of World Refugees Day being observed today (Tuesday), says majority of low-income countries are currently either in or at high risk of debt distress.

Four out of the top 14 low- and middle-income refugee-hosting countries, nearly a third, spent more on servicing external debt than they did on education in 2020.

Pakistan hosts at least 1,743,785 refugees.

The report warns that many refugees have been displaced by a number of intersecting factors rather than one event. Alarming projections indicate that unprecedented rates of displacement show no sign of slowing down.

Report The Price of Hope released ahead of World Refugees Day, being observed today

Recent projections have suggested that an additional 1.2 billion people could be displaced, both within countries and across borders, by 2050, due to climate change alone, it says.

Data shows 76 per cent of the world’s refugees live in low-income and middle-income countries whose education systems already struggle to meet the needs of children and where learning poverty is high.

Resources are massively stretched and many countries receive little to no international support, despite the global public good that refugee-hosting countries perform by opening their borders and educating the world’s refugees.

The general absence of funding for refugee education and host governments is exacerbated by a lack of predictable, long-term funding, a lack of clear financing targets and resource mobilisation plans, and poor coordination among donors.

The report says the world’s largest displacement crises have also become even more protracted. Average humanitarian crisis lasts over nine years and protracted refugee situations last an estimated 26 years.

The intersecting threats of Covid-19, conflict and climate change now threaten to push back progress even further, and increase the education needs of an ever growing population of refugee children, it says.

The ‘Save the Children’ called on the international community to mobilise the funding needed to meet the annual $4.85 billion cost of providing education to refugees and strengthening education systems in low- and middle-income countries.

Resources should be distributed equitably, with a focus on the poorest countries and the education needs of the most marginalised children and young people, including the multiple and intersecting barriers that many refugee children face in accessing quality education and learning, the report emphasised.

Children are over-represented among the world’s refugees. They make up less than one third of the global population, but around 40 per cent of the world’s forcibly displaced population.

At the end of 2021, there were 12.6 million child refugees. The real figure is likely to be even higher as increased rates of displacement were recorded in 2022, the report says.

In a message on World Refugee Day, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that UN needs greater international support for host countries, as

called for by the Global Compact for Refugees, to boost access to quality education, decent work, health care, housing and social protection.

Published in Dawn, June 20th, 2023