They have lost their homes – they must not lose their education

At the world humanitarian summit next week in Istanbul, Turkey, governments have a rare opportunity. By getting behind an initiative aimed at delivering education to some of the world’s most vulnerable children, they could make this a summit that delivers something more than vague promises and a communique that is long on words and short on action.
The initiative comes in the form of a ground-breaking financing mechanism. The education can not wait fund will be launched at the summit by the UN special envoy for education, Gordon Brown, and a group of development agencies, including Unicef, UNHCR – the UN refugee agency – and the Global Partnership for Education.

The aim is to raise $4bn-5bn (£2.7bn-3.5bn) over the next five years to reach children whose education has been disrupted by conflict and other humanitarian emergencies.
We need this initiative for a very simple reason: the current aid architecture for education in emergencies is broken beyond repair.
Consider Syria. In the space of a single primary school generation, the country has gone from education indicators comparable with those in Thailand to levels comparable with South Sudan. Six years of conflict have left some 2.6 million children out of school, either inside Syria or in the neighbouring states.
Describing the international response as inadequate does not do justice to the scale of the shortfall. UN agencies have been responding to a protracted humanitarian crisis in education through chronically under-funded annual appeals to donors. The World Bank’s lending rules have hampered the delivery of concessional finance to middle-income countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. It has taken a protracted effort by the Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, to establish exceptional financing facilities that are delivering modest amounts – commitments to Lebanon’s refugee education strategy are $100m.
 As the international community has fiddled, the education opportunities of an entire generation of Syrian children have burned.
One symptom of the education crisis is the epidemic of child labour. Another is the flight of refugees. Recent research has identified the desperation of parents to secure education for their children as a major reason for undertaking the hazardous journey to Europe.
While the Syria crisis has been in the spotlight, other education emergencies get less attention. Today, one in three children in Central African Republic miss out on education because of violence, displacement and a shortage of teachers. Children among the forgotten refugee populations of Burundi, Eritrea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have not only lost their homes. They have also lost the chance for an education that could enable them to rebuild their lives. Conflict in Yemen has pushed the education system into freefall.

Armed conflict is not the only problem. When disasters strike – floods in Pakistan, earthquakes in Nepal and Haiti or Ebola in west Africa, the restoration of education is often viewed as a second order priority. In 2013, less than 2% of humanitarian appeals were directed to education. Yet parents and children affected by armed conflict and other emergencies consistently view education as a priority.
Based on a proposal framed by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the Education Cannot Wait fund could mark a step towards changing this. For the first time, the facility would establish a pooled resource dedicated to education provision in emergencies. Operating under the auspices of the UN and the Global Partnership on Education, it could help curtail the turf wars and coordination problems that blight education.

GBC-Education to mobilise $100m for new Education Cannot Wait fund

Global Business Coalition for Education (GBC-Education) has announced that it will mobilise $100m (£67.96mn, €89.41m) in financial aid and relevant contributions for a new fund called the Education Cannot Wait, to educate children in emergency situations.

The new fund by Unicef was announced on 23 May at the World Humanitarian Summit, a two-day conference held in Istanbul, Turkey.

"In emergency situations, education is the last priority, leaving millions of children and youth on the streets and impacting growth, stability, innovation and opportunity. The negative long term implications of children not getting a quality education are huge. The business community finds it unacceptable to stand by and lose generations of young people," said Sarah Brown, executive chair of  GBC-Education.

Started in 2012, GBC-Education is a business-led, action-oriented federation of over 100+ businesses worldwide. It engages the business community in strategic partnerships to accelerate progress in delivering quality education for children and youth in crisis.

"We believe that education is the birthright of every child, the key to expanded opportunity, future employment and the cornerstone of greater economic development and social prosperity," the institution said in a press release.

GBC-Education will work with Education Cannot Wait to spot top-challenges in delivering education in crises and tap the capabilities of private sector business leaders and companies to develop new solutions.

To start with, GBC-Education has committed to developing the first-ever database of potential corporate in-kind support for education in crisis.

"The vision is to create a database that can be activated when crisis or emergency strikes, making it possible to identify partners willing to provide expertise, products or services necessary to restore hope and opportunity to children," the statement read.

In February 2016, GBC-Education mobilised $75 million from the private sector to support education initiatives targeting one million Syrian refugees.

Also in 2014, following the kidnapping of the Chibok girls in Nigeria, the organisation along with business leaders came forward for action and created Safe Schools Initiative, which led to the creation of a $30m multi-donor trust fund dedicated to creating safe learning opportunities in Nigeria.

Since then, GBC-Education has expanded this initiative to include work in Pakistan, Ebola-affected countries, Latin-America and in war-torn Middle Eastern countries.

Although, the institution faces several challenges – like reintroducing affected children to the school or to help accelerate students who have fallen behind so that they re-join their apt grade levels – it aims to continue its work in crisis area.

A future of Possibilities through Education. let's help save the world.

An average of four schools or hospitals are attacked or occupied by armed forces and groups every day – according to UNICEF analysis released ahead of the World Humanitarian Summit.

The findings, drawn from the most recent Report of the UN Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, come in the wake of recent attacks on education and health facilities and workers – including the bombing of schools in Yemen, and a strike on a hospital in Aleppo, Syria on 27 April, that killed at least 50 people, including one of the last paediatricians in the area. 

“Children are being killed, wounded, and permanently disabled in the very places where they should be protected and feel safe,” said Afshan Khan, UNICEF’s Director of Emergency Programmes.

“Attacks against schools and hospitals during conflict are an alarming, and disgraceful, trend. Intentional and direct strikes on these facilities, and on health workers and teachers, can be war crimes.  Governments and other actors need to urgently protect schools and hospitals by upholding the provisions of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and states must sign the Safe Schools Declaration.”

Attacks against schools and hospitals are one of the six grave violations against children identified and addressed by the UN Security Council. The last Report of the UN Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict documented more than 1500 incidents of attacks on, or military use of, schools and hospitals in 2014, including:

• In Afghanistan 163 schools and 38 health facilities were attacked.
• In Syria, 60 attacks on education facilities were recorded, as well as nine cases of military use of schools and 28 attacks on health facilities.
• In Yemen, 92 schools were used for military purposes by armed forces and groups.
• In South Sudan, there were seven incidents of attacks on schools and 60 involving military use.
• A total of 543 educational facilities were damaged or destroyed in the State of Palestine and three attacks were documented on Israeli schools.
• According to education authorities in Northeast Nigeria, a total of 338 schools were destroyed and damaged between 2012 and 2014.

Over the past year, the UN monitoring system has also documented so-called ‘double-tap’, or even ‘triple-tap’, strikes on healthcare facilities in which civilians are attacked, as well as the first responders arriving on the scene. 

Beyond attacks on buildings, conflict has other far-reaching consequences on children’s education and healthcare. In Syria, for example, as well as attacks on hospitals, the removal of medical kits and surgical supplies from aid convoys, restrictions on medical evacuations, and killing of medical personnel, mean that access to critical and lifesaving healthcare for civilians in affected areas is diminishing day by day.

“Children are being abducted from their schools in horrific circumstances in countries like Nigeria and South Sudan, while others are being raped, or recruited and used as child soldiers,” said Khan.
The very first World Humanitarian Summit will take place in Istanbul on the 23rd and 24th of May. Global leaders will discuss how to effectively respond to major humanitarian emergencies, and how to be better prepared to meet challenges of the future.