UNRWA schools provide hope to young Palestinians in Jordan

Tánaiste Micheál Martin visiting an UNRWA-funded school in the Talbieh camp in Jordan, where a class of 11- and 12-year-old Palestinian girls revealed aspirations of becoming doctors, architects, and policewomen. 

For more than 1,000 pupils who attend the Talbieh Camp girls’ school, education is the one thing that cannot be taken away from them.

Many of girls enrolled in the school, which is one of four in the refugee camp outside Amman, are second- or even third-generation Palestinian. Their parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents fled to Jordan many years ago, having being forced off their land.

Talbieh was one of six emergency camps set up in 1968 for 5,000 Palestinian refugees who were displaced from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip as a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. There are now more than 2m registered Palestinian refugees living in Jordan.

Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin chatting with teachers and pupils at the elementary school for girls at the Talbieh camp, which is home to 10,000 Palestinians. 

Yet, the girls still see themselves as Palestinian — they eat traditional food at home, keep up customs including wearing tatreez embroidered clothing, and when asked, all say in unison that “yes” they want to return to a home they have never seen.

For Palestinians, whether living in the West Bank, Gaza, or in refugee camps across the Middle East, education is viewed as extremely important.

Before the latest conflict, young people’s completion rates for basic education in the Gaza Strip were at 90% for almost all areas apart from northern Gaza, where that figure was lower at 81%.

Since October 7, UNRWA schools in Gaza have been closed, many of the buildings now bombed, leaving children without education for seven months.

Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin meeting second- and even third-generation young Palestinians in Jordan. 

But UNRWA continues to educate the generations of displaced people in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

And so when 18 countries immediately halted funding to the agency after Israel claimed 12 employees in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attacks, the repercussions were felt far beyond the warn-torn strip.

“It is very important to keep the funding in order for us to keep 700 UNRWA schools in the region functioning and 140 health centres, so we’re talking about critical public services that may risk being interrupted if we don’t have the funds,” said Tamara Alrifai, UNRWA’s director of external relations and communications.

A true people’s person! 🇮🇪 Ireland’s Foreign Minister @MichealMartinTD in conversation with/ @UNRWA’s brilliant school kids in Amman today. A principled foreign policy on the region, a strong supporter of #PalestineRefugees! pic.twitter.com/pXTyd78xTa

— Tamara Alrifai (@TamaraAlrifai) April 24, 2024

“Now we’re working one month at a time, one government at a time, one donor at a time, which is great because we’re able to keep our services but which is not great in terms of business planning and visibility, predictability, but also continuing that sense of normality in Palestinian communities,” she said.

Warning of the damaging impact of a “consistent and persistent campaign” against UNRWA by the Israeli government, Ms Alrifai said: “What we have seen in this war is the power of misinformation and disinformation.”

Tánaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin visiting an UNRWA-run medical facility in Jordan.

While some countries have resumed funding, including Germany this week, Ms Alrifai warned that UNRWA is “not out of the woods” yet and the agency only has funding up until the end of June.

“We’re imploring governments and partners to continue funding. And if anything, we were actually very grateful to Ireland for its steadfast continuous belief in us, for its political and financial support, and for working with other EU members and with other governments, helping us make our case with other governments.”

After visiting the school, where the sixth grade class of 11- and 12-year-olds revealed aspirations of becoming doctors, architects, and policewomen, Tánaiste Micheál Martin simply asked: “Who in their right mind could take funding away from an organisation that provides such an opportunity for young people?”

He said he would be going back to his colleagues at EU level to stress this.