BEIRUT: The conditions of Palestinians living in and outside of Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps are equal to, or even worse, than those in Gaza, a top United Nations Refugee and Work Agency (UNRWA) official said Thursday.

“The situation in Gaza under full Israeli blockade is very difficult,” UNRWA Lebanon director, Salvatore Lombardo, said at the opening of the annual World Education Forum. “But the situation in Lebanon is far from acceptable.”

This year’s forum, part of the World Social Forum, is focusing for the first time on the plight of the Palestinian people and their complex education needs, with a broader focus on education reform in the Arab world.

Although the two-day event is happening at sites across the Palestinian territories, Beirut is serving as an official shadow venue for Arab activists hindered from entering Palestine by Israeli-imposed restrictions.

“Education is fundamental to Palestinians in the region, especially because it brings hope, opportunity and helps to unify the Palestinian people, providing the best chance for the future,” said Lombardo.

In spite of the massive challenges faced by Palestinians, their commitment to education has remained strong with levels mirroring those across the Arab world, said Abel al-Moneim Othman, UN Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) regional director.

In the West Bank almost 1.2 million children – about half the total population – are  enrolled in schools, while a further 172,000 students are attending one of the country’s 11 universities. These rates are among the best in the region and even the world, said Palestine’s Ambassador to Lebanon Abdallah Abdallah.

UNRWA continues to dedicate more than 55 percent of its $1 billion plus annual budget to providing education to more than half a million Palestinians.

The investment, however, is not creating tangible results. The worldwide economic crisis has seen the organization’s funds slashed and its standards – once renowned as the best in the region – fall at an alarming rate.

Increasingly repressive Israeli policies are also diverting money away from Arab-Israeli dominated schools, while measures like road blocks continue to cripple the Palestinian economy.

In Lebanon, where working restrictions exclude Palestinians from many sectors, education is not translating into employment.

Of the 9,000 odd Palestinians – a tiny fraction of Lebanon’s 400,000 plus registered refugees – that graduated from various vocational schools in the last 10 years, only 31 percent found employment in their chosen field. A further 43 percent managed to obtain some kind of employment but 34 percent remain unemployed, a new study conducted by the Consultation and Research Institute has shown.

Those that found work continued to be underpaid, predominantly earning less than $600 a month, with almost 40 percent earning less than the Lebanese minimal wage of $320.

A large part of this shortfall can be attributed to education not corresponding to the needs of the contemporary market.

Office training, the most popular field among Palestinians which attracted 40 percent of students, only managed to place 20 percent of graduates while education and health, where 60 percent of people found employment and the majority earned between $320 and $600, only attracted some 7 percent of students.

A serious re-evaluation of mismanagement is needed if standards are to improve, delegates heard.

But this gap is not restricted to the Palestinian population and is a region-wide phenomenon.

“The Arab world is blindly importing foreign ideas, thoughts and concepts and is accepting them without considering if they meet our needs and demands” said Mounir Bachour a professor of education at the American University of Beirut (AUB). “We don’t even try and see if these approaches are suitable for our teachers and our pupils.”

Expert opinion on what these needs are, however, remains divided. One camp contends that more emphasis must be placed on teaching foreign languages and high-tech learning, while the other insists that overemphasis on English, at the expense of Arabic, is having a devastating impact on cultural unity and capacity for self-expression.

“[The] purpose of education is to preserve our identity and culture … and then allow people to enrich this,” said Bachour. “We simply receive information but history shows us that nations are conquered from the minds of people not by weapons.”