Fiona Cameron has worked with refugees in the UK and Egypt for over fifteen years. Before returning to the UK in 2012 she was working as Educational Director at St Andrew’s Refugee Services (StARS) in Cairo and has remained involved with the organization since then as Chair of the Advisory Board. Fiona has approved the transcript of this interview for placement in the Dialogue Across Borders database.
Q: Can you introduce yourself?
A: I have been involved in various refugee situations. I’m still quite involved in Cairo as well, and just yeah, just do lots of different things in different areas of work. Now I am very much involved in immigration law, the topic of my PhD thesis is refugee-led service delivery.
Q: Education, healthcare, and employment are the main challenges that refugees face in the host communities. Considering your longstanding experience with refugees, do you believe that education represents the basis for a good foundation, thus addressing the other two remaining challenges which are healthcare and employment?
A: I think for everybody, life education is foundational to their integration and to them. In Egypt, there are enormous challenges in the area of education. Although the government has recently announced that it is working on fully integrating refugees of all nationalities in their governmental schools. Classes are still overcrowded, and six years ago Egyptian education was considered one of the worst in the world, even worse than Afghanistan. So it is will be difficult to integrate all those refugees that speak so many different languages and who come from so many different cultures, many of them do not even have the right documents, and most of them are unable to pay for the registration or tuition fees. The reasons that it won’t work are endless. And what has happened now is that UNHCR has taken the money and funding away from refugee schools. The arguments against refugee schools are that they are brutal, uncivilized, witnessing sexual assaults, blah blah, blah, blah blah, blah. These are racist arguments. But you know, back in time, it was a real breakthrough for us when we were able to bring the Sudanese curriculum into schools, because that meant, for the first time ever, that refugee kids in Egypt could actually get a qualification and could go on to university. St. Andrews and Sakakini schools have a pretty good track record now getting kids regularly in universities, not just in Egypt, but also abroad. Although those cases are exceptional and more limited.
I think what I said would have been something like: In an ideal society ,refugee children would be integrated into mainstream schooling as they are in the UK. All children in the UK have a right to go to school no matter what their immigration status. This doesn’t mean that they are treated equally or are able to access the same resources – the pupil premium for example is not available for children who are undocumented, but they have that basic right. This gives them access to integration tools such as friendship – which can be very important when, for example, campaigning for a right to stay in the UK – as well as language and other skills necessary for employment and family life. In Egypt however, the system of education is much poorer generally, although it has improved from where it was in 2013 when it was ranked 118 th in the world. 1 There are many reasons why refugee children are not able to attend mainstream school, from a lack of appropriate documentation to the additional fees charged for everything from books to tutoring, to the fact that Egyptian schools are overcrowded, and racism is rife.
Q: We observed that the UNHCR stopped in 2018 any type of aid and assistance to the refugee learning centers in Egypt as they realized that funding was in many cases mismanaged while no considerable results nor improvement could be seen. How do you think this decision has impacted refugee students? If you were the head of the UNHCR would you have made this decision? Why? Why not?
A:. I think the Government of Egypt took the decision to start integrating refugee children into schools as part of a larger programme of integrating refugee services. They have seen the way that the EU is outsourcing its borders, see the way the money is coming, and want a piece of it. It is (easy to forget) also the morally right thing to do! UNHCR is hugely under-resourced and also is a guest on Egyptian soil, they need to work with the government. I don’t imagine that they had much choice in this matter. I think the effect on learning centers and refugees of this decision is that the learning centers are faced with the choice of shutting up shop, charging higher fees to students, or seeking alternative funding. Most don’t want to do the first, are unable to do the third, and have gone down the route of increasing their fees. This means that more children will simply not be able to attend school, and will suffer the attendant consequences of that.
Q: Why do you think the UNHCR took this decision?
A: I do not think that it is the UNHCR taking this decision. I think it is the government that has pushed the UNHCR to take this decision. We need to remember that the UNHCR is a guest in Egypt in the same ways that an Embassy is a guest in Egypt.
Q: You earlier mentioned that students can study abroad with the Sudanese curriculum, can you further elaborate on that?
A: I would not say that many of the refugee students manage to study abroad, but I know that at St. Andrews. managed to get some refugees going to a university abroad, maybe not in the West but I know that many countries in Africa recognize the Sudanese curriculum, such as Madagascar or South Africa. I agree it is not the best curriculum in the world, books are awful, the translation is awful, it gives the kids trouble, but you know before the Sudanese curriculum we tried teaching the brightest kids (who were also the better off kids) with an international curriculum, but there was no point in it as they could not take any exam after their studies. The IGCSE is expensive, while the Sudanese curriculum was affordable.
Q: Do you feel that it is unfeasible for refugees to suddenly change curriculum and start studying the international one?
A: Yes, apart from the economic barrier, the students would not manage either. We tried teaching IGCSE for a while at StARS, and very few children could match the standard for that exam. For example, of our three top kids, only one managed to pass the exam with an examination fee of around 800 UK pounds. You need teachers that know how to teach that curriculum. It is a very different way of teaching. Teachers need to know how to encourage critical thinking, and also pay those teachers. In Egypt we do not have those teachers, so it is sort of unrealistic. And you know those children are used to memorizing. Neither the Sudanese curriculum nor the Egyptian curriculum encourages thought, critical thinking, and learning. I also know that some learning centers were trying to introduce the South Sudanese curriculum because it’s in English and was supposed to be of a better quality, but I don’t know what happened with that.
Q: Rethinking secondary school education and introducing the IGCSE exam?
A: If you have access to enormous funding then it would be possible, so you can bring teachers that can be trained in that curriculum probably. But when it comes to refugee education you need to look at it as either emergency schooling or integrated schooling, and bringing the international curriculum is neither of those. Integrated schooling would be mixing with the local people, studying their language, and their curriculum, and really integrating. While emergency schooling is more in relying on the assets that we have, to give a temporary solution. But I also think that it is sort of unacceptable to bring foreign specialists and foreign teachers. What you should be doing are upskilling refugees.refugee education so they can teach their own curriculum to their own children.
Q: I fully understand what you are saying but the dream of many of the students is to study at Western universities. Should we then ignore what they want?
A: Well, that is not fully true. In St. Andrew’s we have students that managed to go to universities in the West. We have a pretty good relationship with the African Leadership Academy and Brooke managed to find some private scholarships for sending the students to the West. It is always difficult, but you know Africa Hope learning center spent so many years being so committed and so dedicated trying to provide the American curriculum, but it was just a disaster. I think they failed first of all because of the conditions of the kids. They cannot study properly, manymost of them need to travel lengthy distances, they often will not have slept enough because they have caring responsibilities within the household, or they will have a job in the evenings to help make ends meet. They are often hungry and will don’t have great conditions for managing homework or getting a lot of parental support. There is no point in establishing a system of education that will leave 90% of the students with no education. To learn Arabic, to learn to read and write – that’s a lot for some kids.
Q: You were the executive director at StARS. StARS is one of the most effective, longstanding, and sustainable learning centers with a remarkable excellent performance. What do you think distinguishes StARS from other learning centers. What has made StARS so sustainable over time? In other words, what is the key to sustainability?
A: I think with Sakakini and Africa Hope learning centers it is the churches that they rely on. It is the funding that they receive from the churches but also the fathers and the sisters working as missionaries. They are really qualified and committed teachers. StARS survives both because of its church connection and because it is much more important than a learning center, as its now the biggest service provider for refugees in Cairo. Nowadays the learning center at StARS is kind of coincidental. It was founded in 1979 and it also receives support from all the other services StARS provides, so teachers are trained. We have also a massive adult education where more than 1400 people take classes, or the early childhood development program, staff development programs, psychosocial programs. So I think the sustainability of the learning center at St. Andrews depends pretty much on the sustainability of a network that St Andrews has, while the other learning centers are dependent on churches.
Q: Can you compare the quality of life of refugees in Egypt versus the UK? Do they have access to socialized healthcare in the UK? Access to education in the UK? How is the UK different from other countries in providing refugee assistance?
A: It depends on your definition of a refugee. People who hold refugee status in the UK are able to access everything that I was a UK national can access (with the exception of citizenship voting rights, and a passport). However, there are vast numbers of people in the UK who would consider themselves refugees but do not have that legal recognition whose situation is as precarious as refugees in Egypt. They are unable to access accommodation, welfare benefits, or legal work, and end up living in exploitative relationships, or working conditions, suffering unbelievable poverty for a right national, not accessing medical care, dying in labor, all the bad statistics. Also, the weather is horrible – and that makes a big difference when you’re living on the streets. The UK sees itself (has always seen itself since the end of the second world war) as somehow exceptional, yet persecuted. We take far fewer refugees than any of our European neighbours but still see it as far too much. We treat unrecognized refugees appallingly – but no worse than any other country.
Q: Are refugees from Egypt coming to settle in the UK?
A: resettlement. Yes, refugees come from Egypt through various forms of resettlement, and through so-labeled “illegal” routes as asylum seekers. We have several different resettlement projects, because of immigration and asylum system is so broken that every time there is any type of crisis, we invent a new route to try and stop people seeking asylum. And of course, it just gets more complex. Most
recently we have the Ukrainian crisis which has led to the government shifting the responsibility for refugees to individuals and people are taking refugees (but only from Ukraine) into their homes. There is also community sponsorship but it has been very poorly publicized and support and only brought in small numbers. The largest programmes are the government-sponsored resettlement programmes.
Q: Do you have any ideas and solutions for tackling the whole educational refugee crisis?
A: I would like to see that all the international schools would open their doors to refugee students in the evening, so at least they would have the space. And there is a large number of them. Let’s share some resources guys, but Egypt is not a big fan of sharing resources. This would also make it easier to teach refugee students the international curriculum. And for the teachers, I am sure that most of the teachers in the community schools would love to volunteer and teach in refugee schools as a part-time job, even with very very low salaries, they love to do something good. But it is difficult because even the private schools are under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, and the government is really clear in the preferential treatment for their own nationals. And so when it comes to investing resources that do not provide immediate benefit to Egyptian nationals, the government can be really disruptive. And even there is this preferential treatment among refugee communities. For example, Eritrean refugees face many more challenges than the Sudanese or Syrian refugees, first of all, because of language barriers. They do not speak Arabic, and sometimes they even struggle with English.
Many years ago, when I first started working in Cairo, many learning centers catered exclusively to a specific nationality, but that stopped when refugees from different countries and cultures started to come into Cairo. Many are still segregated along the lines of religion though, and some still by nationality. The other thing I think (and I didn’t say this in the interview, but I’m adding it in here) is – very much like there is now a refugee team in the Olympic games, there should be a refugee curriculum with a recognized certificate which can be administered simply anywhere in the world (in translation obviously) and can be applied to universities all over the world.
Q: You explained that Eritreans face many barriers. Can you further elaborate on those barriers when it comes to entering university?
A: In my (very limited and out-of-date) experience, it appears that students who are not from Sudan are having more difficulty in obtaining an official school leaving certificate even if they do pass the exams. This obviously makes it more difficult for them to get into university. There may also be a price differential for non-Sudanese students in exam fees, but I’m not sure. I don’t know why this would be, but it may be something to do with the Nile water problem, from what I have read. Obviously, non-Sudanese refugees also face language problems and are much more likely to suffer discrimination within Egypt, because of the long history of integration between Sudan and Egypt.
Q: Would you encourage Sudanese students to go to a governmental school or to a learning center?
A: It depends a lot on the situation. If your option is going to a very crowded governmental school where you face a lot of racism or going to St Andrew’s I would recommend you to go to St Andrew’;s. But if your choice is one of those little tiny learning centers where they do not teach you anything except the Bible, and the teachers are students it could be different. Ideally, refugee students should be integrated into public schools, but ideally, the school system should be one that is properly resourced and specialist provision should be put in for refugee children.
Q: How do you feel about learning centers that have a religious bias?
A: I think they perpetuate everything that is wrong in the world. I honestly cannot deal with them. I mean St Andrews has also this religious component. The church is there. The church owns St. Andrews but we have LGTB programs, and we are able to maintain this distance. But in other learning centers is can be terrible. If you are a refugee in a Muslim country and you are not learning anything about their culture, how they are the same as you, so it is just insane. It completely goes against integration and it perpetuates stereotypes, racism, and more.
Q: How do you feel about the role of the UNHCR in Egypt?
A: UNHCR is a guest on Egyptian soil, the same as an embassy. It is desperately underfunded and unable to manage the huge number of people it has to work with. It was never set up with the intention of providing services for hundreds of thousands of people and it just can’t manage it. There is some wonderful staff who work at UNHCR, but generally, it is overwhelmed and the resettlement system has a reputation for corruption.
