On the International Day of Education, we call on world leaders to transform how we deliver on education.
The clock is ticking. As a global community, we have committed to delivering universal, equitable education by 2030. That’s just eight short years to get a quarter of a billion children into the classroom.
While remarkable efforts are underway, armed conflicts raging worldwide, forced displacement, climate change-induced disasters, and now COVID-19 are derailing progress, compromising the futures of entire generations. Unless we act now, it will affect all of humanity one day.
On the International Day of Education, it’s time we change course and transform how we deliver on our promise of universal education – especially for the millions of girls and boys caught in emergencies and protracted crises who are being denied their inherent human right to go to school, to learn and to thrive. They are the ones left furthest behind and whom we need to place at the forefront at this critical juncture.
According to UNESCO, as many as 258 million children and youth don’t attend school across the world. Two out of three students are still impacted by full or partial school closures from COVID-19. Girls are particularly at risk, with estimates projecting that between 11 million and 20 million girls will not return to school after the pandemic.
While a minority of people on the planet are enjoying all the comforts of modern life, over 617 million children and adolescents cannot read or do basic math. That’s more than the total population of Germany, the United Kingdom and United States combined.
The children living on the frontlines of conflict, forced displacement, disasters and protracted crises are the most at risk, with as many as 128 million in need of urgent education support.
So how do we get back on track and deliver on our promises? There are three key pillars to transforming education for children in emergencies and protracted crises. Number 1. We need to step up in a major way to fund these efforts. Number 2. We need to deliver in partnership, break down silos, and find ways to be more agile and responsive. Number 3. We need to deliver context-specific whole-of-child solutions geared to the realities of crisis.
Number 1. Funding education in emergencies
It starts with substantive financing and predictable funding. As the UN’s global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) has surpassed $1 billion in funds mobilized for its Trust Fund (and $1 billion leveraged or aligned in-country to ECW’s investments).
This milestone was possible thanks to ECW’s strategic donors, such as Germany who announced today US$228.3 million (Є200 million) in additional funding to support the fund’s multi-year investments, becoming ECW’s single largest donor to date with US$362.7 million (Є318 million) in total contributions.
Beyond scaling up significant financing, flexibility and predictability are also crucial. Quality learning outcomes cannot be achieved through short-term emergency responses. We need multi-year funding and programmes that can adapt to evolving needs amidst the instability that is intrinsic to crisis and which can ensure a continuous and uninterrupted education.
Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4: inclusive, equitable quality education, is the best way to advance all the other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is the silver bullet for creating social and economic impacts that can generate long-lasting human development and prosperity.
For every $1 spent on girls’ education, we generate approximately $2.80 in return. Making sure girls finish secondary education could boost the GDP of developing countries by 10% over the next decade.
In just five years, ECW has been able to reach five million children and adolescents with the safety and opportunity of a quality education
On the ground, this means that in places like Bangladesh, Chad, Ecuador and Syria children are receiving the holistic support they need to return to the safety, protection and opportunity of quality learning environments.
As we’ve seen from Germany’s generous contribution today, key public donors are rising to this challenge and prioritizing education in their official development or/and humanitarian assistance.
Now it’s time for others to follow suit. ODA governments will need to scale up financing to match the actual needs, all while we must also further engage with the private sector and philanthropic foundations to dramatically bolster our global investment in education based on realistic calculations commensurate to the actual costs.
In a world where football teams sell for billions of dollars and billionaires fly themselves into space, how is it possible that we are not finding the resources to send every child to school?
Investing in a child’s education means investing in all of humanity. It is time to transform our perception of the world, our priorities and how we shoulder our responsibility as a human family.
Number 2. Delivering in partnership
No single stakeholder can do it alone. At this year’s Transforming Education Summit, convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, we will ask ourselves how we can avert a generational catastrophe and rethink our education systems and financing thereof to make good on our commitments and promises.
When it comes to investing in education, one part of the solution is to break down silos and build bridges. Based the United Nations Secretary-General’s reform, this means partnerships through joint programming, or ‘The New Way of Working.” ECW’s global investments translate the Secretary-General’s UN reform into results.
Think how partnerships can work to deliver education in a crisis like Afghanistan – where ECW has invested in joint programming for holistic approaches, bridging humanitarian and development operations, since 2018.
Teachers’ salaries must be paid. Schools and learning centers need to be built and equipped. Girls and female teachers need to feel safe going to school – and girls’ rights to an education must be upheld. Students that have dealt with a lifetime of conflict and trauma need mental health services.
On my recent mission to Afghanistan, I saw firsthand how collaboration among humanitarian and development stakeholders is crucial to effectively address these multiple challenges. Despite the bulk of international aid to Afghanistan remaining frozen, on the ground UN agencies, and international and national NGOs have the operational capacities required to deliver the response – they only lack the funding.
ECW partners like UNICEF and WFP, as well as numerous NGOs – such as Save the Children, Swedish Afghanistan Committee, the Aga Khan Foundation and Wadan – are jointly supporting education in this mountainous and seemingly inaccessible country, including secondary girls’ education.
To transform the delivery of education, visionary leaders such as the UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of ECW Gordon Brown, António Guterres, the UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed, and German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Svenja Schulze are approaching education through a new lens, connecting humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding aid interventions.
Number 3. Whole-of-child solutions
A child who is hungry or traumatized by the unspeakable violence they have witnessed will most likely struggle to achieve quality learning outcomes. No matter how well-trained a teacher is, or how well-equipped a classroom is, if a girl skips classes each month during her periods for a lack of sanitary products or of adequate sanitation facilities at the school, or if she dares not go to school for fear of harassment and kidnapping – we are failing her.
Delivering education to children and adolescents living in crisis settings goes beyond providing classrooms and textbooks. We must create the enabling environments and policies needed to support the overall wellbeing of a child – including educational, psychological, socio-emotional needs, health, nutrition, and protection – and ensure that gender equality and disability inclusion are at the core of our responses.
Only by working collectively will we have the breadth of expertise and the operational outreach to support these multiple facets of a child’s or adolescent’s needs. Only then will we unlock the power of education for these girls and boys to achieve their potentials and thrive.
Our place in history
We are living in one of history’s inflection points.
Seas are rising and threatening human existence, and millions of children are being denied their inherent right to an education, as a consequence of conflict, abject poverty and climate-induced disasters, which displace families and entire communities, erode infrastructure and brain-drain a country. In two years, a virus has taken over 5 million lives, disrupted global commerce, and impacted the lives of people around the world.
Education is the very bedrock that can steer our efforts to safeguard our humanity. The clock is ticking, and there will be no other chance. Now is the time to define the future of our existence on earth to deliver on our global promises for a better, more stable, just and prosperous world.
In the final analysis, leaders driven by humanity rather than power see things from afar and within. And so, they recognize the relation between themselves, the world, and universal values and human rights.
In honor of the rights of the 128 million children and youth whose education has been disrupted in their young lives due to conflict, forced displacement and climate-disasters, I call on all of you – not only to define – but to direct their and our future.
