Many countries around the world have been subjected to Western sanctions, and each dealt in a specific manner with those sanctions, which enabled some to reduce the effects of those sanctions, albeit to varying degrees. However, the case in Syria was “special” (as is our situation these days in breaking all sorts of records in the worst way possible).

At the beginning of Ramadan 2022, the average cost of living for a Syrian family of 5 has exceeded 2.8 million Syrian pounds according to Kassioun index. It is an unprecedented increase within a record period of time that threatens millions of Syrians who are witnessing a catastrophic gap between the costs of living and the minimum wage of Syrian workers, which remains at the threshold of 92,970 Syrian pounds (i.e., less than half of the cost of the minimum amount of food per working individual alone)! 

Like other Syrian fields of activity, the sector of education with its two sides – education and higher education – has deteriorated rapidly throughout the years of the crisis. Apart from occasions’ slogans about the importance of the education sector in the country, figures reveal a disastrous decline at all levels in this sector, including government spending on it, which kept rapidly shrinking and reducing until we reached a point where the government (discretionary) spending on the education sector in 2021 has not even reached a quarter of what it used to be in 2010. 

Eleven years after the crisis erupted in the country, its disastrous impacts have affected the entire society, and of course, children were the most vulnerable and fragile segment. The crisis and its repercussions have left millions of children in need, who are obliged to coercively engage in labor market to fill part of the huge gap between wages and the minimum of food and living costs. Meanwhile, the vast majority of these children live in unsuitable environments and consequences that threaten them with negative social impacts that may expand to a minimum of two generations.