Please refer to the attached file.
Background
The war in Ukraine has had a devastating humanitarian impact on children and families from Ukraine. UNHCR estimates that as of December 2025, roughly 6.8 million people from Ukraine have been displaced to other countries and another 3.5 million are internally displaced. Moldova shares a large border with Ukraine and has traditionally had strong socio-economic ties with the country. Moldova is considered an upper middle-income country with a population of roughly 2.65 million people (2020).1 Despite strong economic growth, Moldova remains amongst the poorest countries in Europe. The GDP per capita remains around USD 4,500 annually. However, even with domestic economic challenges, the Republic of Moldova has been incredibly supportive and generous to the situation of refugees from neighboring Ukraine. Since late February 2022, Moldova has faced a large influx of refugees entering Moldova due to the conflict in Ukraine. According to the UNHCR Data Portal, between March 2022 and December 2025, a total of over 1.2 million people from Ukraine crossed the borders from Ukraine to the Republic of Moldova. 2 Many of them continued their journey to other European countries, but about 135,000 refugees remain in Moldova, of whom 42% are children. A small number of non-Ukrainian asylum seeking, and refugee children also reside in Moldova. In order to ensure a systematic, coherent, and sustainable approach to the integration of refugee children MER with the support of UNICEF and UNHCR, developed and approved the Roadmap for the Integration of Refugee Children into Schools in the Republic of Moldova on 1 April 2025. The Roadmap sets out the strategic directions for ensuring the educational inclusion of refugee children within the general education system of the Republic of Moldova. It is complemented by an expanded action plan for 2025 to 2026, which estimates the cost required to fully integrate all refugee children from Ukraine into the Moldovan education system. Despite these efforts, many families continue to choose online education under the Ukrainian curriculum for their children, resulting in low enrolment rates in Moldovan schools. The amendment of the Temporary Protection Directive adopted in March 2025 introduced, for the first time, the obligation for parents to record the educational status of their children with Regional Educational Departments, as set out in Article 17.1. Furthermore, the new Temporary Protection amendment planned for 2026 will integrate this obligation into the registration procedure for the renewal or issuance of Temporary Protection status. Based on these changes, it is expected that during 2026 the Ministry of Education and Research will be able to obtain more accurate data on the number of children studying online. Nevertheless, no system currently exists to monitor the quality of online education.