Issues of citizenship, and education during conflict

There are plenty of documentaries out there describing the plight of the Syrian refugees. One such documentary that I came across, which had a lasting impact on me, was Born in Syria. This documentary is carefully curated from the perspectives of the Syrian children who fled Syria amid the civil war that has engulfed the country since almost a decade now. It shows the narrative of the children where these refugee kids thought that the most difficult part of the journey of fleeing Syria and settling down in a new European country was travelling on a rubber boat across the ocean to reach Turkey. However, soon these kids realise that was perhaps the easiest part.

The documentary is not easy to watch. It is very raw in terms of story-telling, and thus hits heart. Imagining the lives of the kids who have been separated or have completely lost their families is difficult let alone watching that happen. Also, while one watches them suffer to achieve a safe shelter, food, access to toilets and warm clothes, it makes one wonder how secondary the problem of education becomes when it comes to fleeing war and finding security. Once these refugees start settling down and stop moving from one country to next to be 'accepted' as refugees, the questions around citizenship make it almost impossible for them to be enrolled in schools. Sometimes lack of citizenship also deprives these refugee children from attaining formal education certifications that could help them escape the poverty and crisis they are in while residing in a foreign country. Questions of integration, language barriers and culture start to manifest and these refugees have to overcome a plethora of problems before accessing education in the foreign land.

I would recommend you all to watch it for as long as you can since it gets overwhelming at times. But it is also important to see how they are dealing with the issues of conflict, refuge and education in order to have construct debates on whose responsibility is it exactly to provide them with education.

P.S. It is available to watch on Netflix.