Peru

Peru hosts the second-largest population of Venezuelan refugees and migrants in the region. Refugees and migrants face significant challenges, including limited access to health and education, food insecurity, and housing issues, which expose women and children to higher risks like human trafficking and violence, while also faced with unfair treatments, discrimination, and xenophobia.

Despite government policies guaranteeing education access for all children in Peru regardless of legal status, barriers such as unclear enrollment processes, financial constraints, frequent mobility, and discrimination and poor enforcement of these policies at school level, keep Venezuelan children out of school or dropping out at high rates. Thousands of Venezuelan children remain out of school, and dropout rates among refugee and migrant children are far higher than the national average. In addition, due to barriers in enrollment and lack of sufficient vacancies in schools, there are often months of gap in enrollment, leading to a large number of children lagging behind. Overaged children are especially vulnerable to dropping out due to limited alternative education options. This is compounded by differences in curricula and teaching methods, particularly in mathematics, which make learning difficult for Venezuelan students, while teachers are poorly equipped to tailor to the diverse needs of students.

Within this context, a holistic response is required to address the immediate education needs to ensure access, retention, and completion of education trajectories, and provide well-being and safety for children and adolescents in and around schools, while strengthening systems, data and policies for longer-term resilience. With this aim, ECW builds on the impact of its previous investments in Peru and continues its support through a new Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) in Metropolitan Lima and La Libertad.