Gordon Brown: 2015 a year of fear for refugee children

2015 a year of fear for refugee children-average time away from home in exile at around 17 years

CNN: Ten million of the world's 30 million displaced boys and girls are now refugees from their home country. With the average time away from home in exile at around 17 years,
children could go through their entire school-age years, from birth to adulthood, without ever entering a classroom. And rising refugee numbers explain why, according to a new UNESCO report published Monday, 124 million never go to school at all, 59 million of them being primary age boys and girls. While shelter, food and health care are vital to survival, it is education -- and the idea that you can prepare and plan for your future -- that, if curtailed or neglected, deprives young people of hope.

Currently, only about 1% of humanitarian budgets go to education. The educational needs of refugees are forgotten, trapped between development aid and humanitarian assistance that understandably focuses on health care, food and shelter, while standard aid budgets are allocated years in advance and take little account of unplanned-for crises.