Post-Primary Education Dilemmas in Protracted Refugee Situations

When people are displaced en masse to a neighboring country due to ongoing conflict at home, they often stay there for many years as refugees. In such protracted situations, when the initial emergency phase of the refugee crisis has long passed, funding for refugee assistance invariably diminishes. Given the inevitability of competing demands for scarce resources, budgetary allocations to education may be the first to suffer. In addition, allocations to primary education often compete with funds for post-primary education, which is more expensive to provide. This chapter highlights the dilemmas that arise as the result of this competition for funding. The case of the Sudanese refugees in Uganda from the mid 1980s up to the present is used to illustrate these dilemmas. It argues that post-primary education is vital for refugees' present and future needs, and for the reconstruction of war-torn countries.