Education and Development: The Issues and the Evidence

urbanisation in patterns educational assistance targeted on poverty alleviation. These
shifts are not only of a quantitative kind. Urban environments are different to rural
environments; employment opportunities have a different quality, and different types of
educational provision may be thought relevant.

1.3.5 Displaced populations and refugees

Displaced populations have been growing. In the Sudan, in Southern Africa, and in
parts of South East Asia there are substantial flows of people driven by war, drought
and famine to seek safer and more tolerable living conditions. For example more than
400,000 refugees are estimated to be in makeshift camps in Kenya coming from the
surrounding countries at rates of anything up to 1000 an hour (Sunday Times
7.6.92:22), and there are almost certainly more than ten million displaced persons
throughout Africa. These populations, and others like them, represent some of the most
marginalised and educationally underprivileged groups whose prospects are the most
bleak. The states in which they reside may or may not recognise their citizenship and
are unlikely to place a high value on educational provision for either adults or children.
As the numbers of refugees have grown so their social and economic characteristics
have been changing. Most are now from rural, poorly educated and economically
deprived backgrounds moving from one developing country to another through force of
circumstance (Preston 1991). The need for emergency assistance to these groups is
widely recognised. The politics of educational assistance are much more complex. The
needs exist at several levels. Basic health and nutritional information is a priority to
keep such populations as healthy as is feasible under difficult conditions. In some cases
language and communication problems can only be solved if members of the displaced
community acquire the language of their hosts.

Longer term resettlement programmes are likely to benefit from inputs that raise the
educational status of these displaced populations and improve their employment
prospects. It may be that because of the special characteristics of these groups, and
because their status is often difficult to define, NGO's may be best placed to provide
educational assistance.

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