Parents and teachers are alarmed by the growing numbers of Somali refugee children quitting school in Dadaab because they have lost hope for the future due to the slated closure of the camps.<\/p>\n
Hussein Hassan Mohamed decided not to go back to school again after his parents informed him that they would be going home to Somalia in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy future seems very bleak; this is the end of my education! I\u2019ve spent 11 years in school,\u201d he told Radio Ergo.\u00a0 He was a form three student at Waberi secondary school in Dadaab\u2019s Hagadera camp.<\/p>\n
Nafiso Osman, 18, was in form one in Dagahley secondary school when she heard that the Kenyan government planned to close the refugee camps starting towards the end of this year. She felt utterly dejected.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter eight years of school I\u2019ve realized that I won\u2019t be able to get my certificate or sit for the national examinations in November. I know the importance of education, but I\u2019ve dropped out of school because all the refugees will be repatriated. I will not be in school if we return home,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Students in Dadaab staged a demonstration on 29 June against Kenya\u2019s decision to close the camps.<\/p>\n
After the protest, a meeting was held by the Windle Trust, an NGO providing educational support for refugees, and the UN\u2019s refugee agency, UNHCR, to explain the modalities of the repatriation process and convince students that they would not be forced back to Somalia.<\/p>\n
Since then, however, about 2,000 students have dropped out of the seven high schools in the camps, according to Shefe\u2019e Abdullahi Abdi, an official of Windle Trust.\u00a0 Some 760 of those who have left school are girls.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe announcement regarding the closure of the camps has affected education in the camps and the students are very disappointed,\u201d Shafe\u2019e said.<\/p>\n
Tawakal secondary school alone has lost 200 students.<\/p>\n
Mohamed Hussein, the principal, reported that class sizes had shrunk from 60 to 40 students. \u201cThe most affected ones are those in their third year of high school. They are worried and they believe that they will not be able to finish their education despite spending so many years in school,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Yusuf Mohamed Mohamud, a refugee living in Ifo camp, told Radio Ergo that his son had dropped out of his third year of high school.\u00a0 He described it as a big step backwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the main reasons why we are in the camp is to access the free education programmes for our children.\u00a0 My son is so disappointed and I have failed to convince him to go back to school over the past month,\u201d Yusuf said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Parents and teachers are alarmed by the growing numbers of Somali refugee children quitting school in Dadaab because they have lost hope for the future due to the slated closure of the camps. Hussein Hassan Mohamed decided not to go back to school again after his parents informed him that they would be going home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1072"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1074,"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions\/1074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmdsom.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}