October 3, 2026
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has warned that about 6 million refugee children around the world will be deprived of school seats during 2025, stressing that the increasing cuts in funding threaten to exclude millions more and undermine years of progress achieved in the education sector.
The Commission’s latest annual report on education, issued under the title “Paths to the Future: Education, Opportunity and Self-Reliance,” stated that the number of refugee children out of school reached about 5.8 million children, representing 44% of the total 13.1 million school-age refugee children around the world.
In this context, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Barham Salih, recalling his personal experience, said: “When I look back at the years I lived as a refugee, I realize the importance of education. It gave me opportunities that displacement would have otherwise deprived me of, and it helped me rebuild my life and create my future.” He stressed that education represents an essential means of protection and a path to opportunities and self-reliance, warning that reducing its funding undermines decades of investment in light of the pressures facing humanitarian and development aid.
At the educational level, the transition to secondary education still represents a huge challenge. The enrollment rate in primary education reached 65% in 2025, while it decreased to only 32% at the secondary level. These challenges are sharply exacerbated for refugee girls due to poverty, protection risks, early marriage, and other pressures that push an increasing number of them to drop out of school.
On the other hand, higher education recorded a notable jump, with enrollment rising to a record level of 11% in 2025, compared to 9% in 2024. For the first time, the number of refugee students enrolled in higher education exceeded 450,000, bringing UNHCR and its partners closer to achieving the goal of raising enrollment to 15% by 2030, through universities, vocational training, connected learning, scholarships, and educational pathways in third countries.
Despite the transformative role of higher education in economically empowering refugee women and girls, access to it remains highly uneven; Refugee enrollment in higher education remained below the national average in more than 80% of the countries that provided data last year. In low-income countries affected by conflict, the percentage was limited to only 2%, compared to 13% for citizens.
UNHCR stressed that investing in refugee education simultaneously supports national education systems that serve host communities, especially with the increasing numbers of refugees studying alongside members of those communities, which requires the provision of teachers, classrooms, educational materials, and adequate funding.
At the conclusion of its report, the Commission called on the international community and development partners to protect education financing and invest in the national educational infrastructure of host countries. High Commissioner Barham Salih said: “Our ambition must go beyond simply keeping children in classrooms. Displacement should not determine the ceiling or horizons of a child’s life,” stressing that a child who learns today becomes able to rely on himself and contribute in the future, whether he returns to his homeland or settles in the country of asylum.
