Most public information about the aid given was “too vague or unclear to trace”, said a report from the US non-governmental organisation, which followed the pledges to fund education for Syrian refugees, made at a conference in London in February 2016.
The biggest donors were the European Union, the US, Germany, the UK, Japan and Norway, which collectively contributed more than the overall 2016 target of $1.4bn for education in Syria and countries hosting refugees in the region.
But the report, published on Thursday last week, said education budgets in host countries, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, were underfunded, despite the collective pledge of 2016 to provide – and fund - “quality education” to all Syrian refugee children by the end of the 2016-17 school year.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) found the lack of transparency among donors meant more than 530,000 Syrian schoolchildren in Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan were still out of school at the end of the 2016-17 school year.
“Donors and host countries have promised that Syrian children will not become a lost generation, but this is exactly what is happening,” said Simon Rau, Mercator fellow at HRW.
“More transparency in funding would help reveal the needs that aren’t being met so they could be addressed and get children into school,” he added.
The donors pledged to provide about $250m for education in Jordan and $350m for Lebanon before the beginning of the school year in 2016, but by the end of the calendar year, Jordan still had a $41m budget gap and Lebanon was missing $97m.
The report said the figures given and received did not add up and that the host countries probably undercounted the number of Syrian children in need of education as nearly 1 million refugees in Lebanon and Jordan remain unregistered.
Turkey received about $742m for education last year, mostly from the EU, but various reports said only between $14.7m and $46m reached the country by the beginning of the school year.
The EU was the biggest donor in 2016, spending more than $776m in education aid through three channels.
The EU humanitarian arm, European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) and the Facility for Refugees in Turkey both provided detailed reports about the funding but the Regional Trust Fund in Response to the Syria Crisis did not.
The US Agency for International Development reported that it provided development aid of $248m for education in Jordan, but its tracking database only accounted for $82m, while the Jordanian government database listed only $13m from the US in 2016, HRW said.
Japan only published little information on when aid was delivered or what it was for, while Norway published information but HRW said it could improve by publishing aid data in the International Aid Transparency Initiative format.
Germany’s reports have shortcomings such as disbursement dates, which the ministry says are results of its IT infrastructures, the report said.
HRW found the UK to have done well in publishing detailed information about its aid.
