"Impoverished Syrian Teachers in Turkey", March 20, 2018

Some Syrian teachers worked in temporary schools established in Turkey with the support of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to support the education of Syrian students...Turkey plans to transfer all Syrian students (currently estimated at 612,000) to Turkish schools by 2019. It also plans to close all Syrian interim schools and construct more public schools in cooperation with UNICEF to absorb the additional students in areas with a large number of refugees. These unilateral decisions... raised serious concerns about the future of more than 13,000 Syrian teachers working in these schools, especially as UNICEF is nearing the completion of its mandate which has not yet been renewed. Imran al-Homsi is a science teacher at... a temporary school for displaced Syrians... accused UNICEF of failing to address grievances of thousands of Syrian academics; deliberately ignoring their demands. According to al-Homsi, after four years of work in these schools he only receives so-called voluntary compensation from UNICEF in the amount of 1,300 Turkish liras per month ($340). The same organization pays salaries up to 3,800 liras ($1,000) to Turkish teachers in the same schools. Al-Homsi described the large difference in the salaries of Syrian and Turkish teachers working together in the same institution and paid by the same organization as "inhumane" and "exploitative" of teachers forced by the war to leave their homes...