Authors: Eladio Jiminez Made and Nicole Suarez Sabio*
Every day across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), many children cross borders, rivers, jungles and dangerous migration routes in search of safety. Yet for millions of them, the greatest challenge begins after they arrive. Too often, school doors remain closed.
One of the world’s largest child displacement crises is unfolding across the region, and many affected children remain invisible within education systems. Across LAC, millions of children are on the move due to conflict, violence, insecurity, poverty, climate shocks, family separation, and humanitarian instability. They include refugees or asylum seekers, migrants, internally displaced children, returnees, and undocumented children travelling through mixed migration routes. Despite these differing legal categories, many face the same reality: interrupted schooling, discrimination, trauma, lack of documentation, and exclusion from education systems when they most need protection and stability.
A Regional Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight
Today, more than 21 million people across LAC are displaced due to conflict, violence, climate change and poverty, including an estimated 6–8 million children. The region also hosts over 9.5 million internally displaced people (IDPs), many fleeing gang violence, conflict, and disasters, of whom approximately 2.6 million are children. The movement of Venezuelans across borders is one of the single largest displacement crises of the 21st century, with around 7.9 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants globally and 6.9 million in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Importantly, LAC has long recognised that displacement often extends beyond narrow legal definitions of refugeehood. The 1984 Cartagena Declaration broadened the definition of refugee to include people fleeing generalised violence, internal conflict, human rights violations, and other circumstances that seriously disturb public order. This framework acknowledged the complex and overlapping drivers of displacement, a reality that remains highly relevant for children on the move today.
On World Refugee Day (June 20), the global call to stand with refugees must also remind us that many displaced children do not fit neatly into one legal category. Children should not have to prove their legal status before they can access education.
Education as Protection, Not Privilege
For children on the move, education is far more than access to a classroom. It provides safety, routine, psycho-social support, and protection from exploitation, recruitment, child labour, trafficking, and long-term poverty. However, education systems remain designed around administrative categories rather than children’s realities.
Governments and education partners must move beyond status-based approaches and prioritise children’s rights above administrative labels. A child’s right to education should not depend on documentation or immigration status. Immediate enrolment, flexible learning pathways, recognising prior learning, strengthening psychosocial support systems and support for host schools are essential to ensuring children on the move can continue learning safely and with dignity.
Colombia: Protecting Education Amid Displacement and Conflict
This challenge is particularly urgent in countries such as Colombia, where attacks on education, forced displacement, and recruitment by armed groups continue to disrupt children’s lives. When schools are occupied, attacked, or forced to close, children become more vulnerable to displacement, unsafe migration, irregular work and recruitment by armed actors. In these contexts, maintaining access to safe learning environments becomes a critical form of protection.
In Colombia, we have supported system-level responses to mixed migration and internal displacement affecting children, and through a monitoring and evaluation tool, gaps have been revealed in the capacity of Secretariats of Education to respond to the needs of refugee and migrant populations. In response, the project developed four training modules to strengthen stakeholder capacity to activate rights-restoration pathways for displaced children, as well as to address mixed migration flows, xenophobia and social cohesion within schools and communities.
Mexico: Strengthening Access Through Refugee Education Support
While many children on the move fall outside formal refugee categories, refugee-specific support mechanisms continue to play a critical role in protecting access to education in countries such as Mexico, where asylum and displacement trends continue to place pressure on education systems and disrupt children’s ability to continue their education safely.
In 2021 alone, more than 130,000 people applied for refugee status in Mexico. Through EAA Foundation’s project with UNHCR, direct support was provided to asylum-seeking and refugee children to facilitate their enrolment in primary education by using cash-based assistance to help families cover school and distance-learning related costs, while working with federal and local authorities to sensitise teachers and school directors and strengthen public school capacity.
Protecting the Future of a Mobile Generation
Ultimately, protecting the right to education for children on the move requires collaboration between governments, NGOs, INGOs, development banks, the private sector, and financial institutions, and local communities. It will also require stronger financing commitments, improved data systems, cross-border recognition of learning, and policies that remove administrative and legal barriers preventing children from accessing education quickly and safely.
The reality is that mobility will continue shaping the future of Latin America and the Caribbean for years to come. Education systems must not only absorb displaced learners but also actively protect them. For children on the move, the greatest danger is not crossing borders, it is being excluded from the systems meant to protect their future.
*Nicole Suarez is an education officer with the Educate a Child (EAC) programme at the Education Above All Foundation. She holds a Master’s of Science in Violence, Conflict and Development, and works on initiatives that advance equitable access to education and inclusive learning environments for vulnerable children and youth. Her work focuses on education in contexts affected by displacement, inequality, and social vulnerability.
