• BLOCKED: Two thirds of refugee children in Mexico (6 to 18 years old) are not able to attend school with most of them citing local schools asking for documents they did not have, according to a new poll by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Mexican Government.
• SCHOOL: Done in the second half of 2017 among a group of 314 refugee homes in the Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Baja California and Mexico City, the poll showed that 67% of refugee children were not able to produce school certificates and birth certificates, blocking them from enrollment.
• DOCUMENTS: “Among those respondents who cited a reason why children in the house do not study, the main reason is that the educational institutions requested documents that they did not have”, the poll says adding that schools even rejected children with permanent resident cards.
• DATA: Done prior to the 2019 peak of refugee arrivals from Central America, the poll updates a study from 2011. Refugee claims in Mexico grew from 800 in 2012 to 14,600 in 2018 with most of them presented by people from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala fleeing criminal violence.
