Conflicts in Northern Ethiopia’s regions of Afar, Amhara and Tigray, have pushed children and adolescents out of school and are fueling humanitarian needs in the region. In response to this crisis, Education Cannot Wait (
ECW) announced today a US$2 million First Emergency Response Grant that will reach more than 20,000 refugee and displaced, as well as host community children and adolescents. This brings ECW ongoing investments in
Ethiopia to over $30 million.
“I first think about my children. They are why we were forced to leave - because our children are always our first concern.”
These are the moving words of Victoria, who fled the brutal war in Ukraine with her two daughters. Her eyes welling up with tears, she recalled their dangerous journey from Ukraine. She and her two school-aged daughters were forced to leave behind everything they have ever known.
Fourteen-year-old Hadiza smiles as she clutches a purple bag in her hands. Inside the cloth bag is a Menstrual Hygiene Management kit, an essential item that gives her dignity and enables her to continue with school even when menstruating.
A brutal war now engulfs the young lives of an estimated 7.5 million children in Ukraine. Caught in the crossfire of bullets and missiles as the conflict escalates, children and young people have been plunged into a humanitarian crisis.
Expanding on Education Cannot Wait’s (
ECW) US$5 million Ukraine
First Emergency Response grant announced in March, ECW today announced a new, initial US$1.5 million allocation to support the education in emergencies response for the Ukraine refugee crisis in Moldova while on mission with strategic partners
USAID,
FCDO/UK and
Theirworld. This new allocation brings ECW’s total Ukraine crisis education response to US$6.5 million to date. The new grant will be delivered in partnership with the Government of Moldova to ensure refugee children and youth can access safe and protective learning opportunities. Investments will also benefit children in the host communities. The development of the grant will be facilitated through the coordination mechanism established for the education response.
Look around the world at this very moment. Whether we look at it in stark numbers and statistics, whether we look at it as a generational loss of basic human rights, including the right to an education, or whether we look inwardly and feel the unspeakable human suffering and devastation taking place, we all agree: we are at a historically low point in our collective humanity.
Nine-year-old Marguerite Doumkel sits among other children in a classroom in Paoua, a sub-prefecture of Ouham Pende, in the Central African Republic (CAR).
For decades now, world leaders have talked about ending hunger and poverty and building a new world order based on human rights and gender-equality.
Struggling with stigma and discrimination in an unaccommodating environment, Nujeen Mustafa knows all too well the difficulties children with disabilities face in emergency and protracted crises.
Unable to walk, see or hear, and without assistance, the multiple barriers between 240 million children with disabilities and the education system mean nearly half are likely never to have attended school.
Conflict, forced displacement, climate change and COVID-19 are disrupting the education of millions of crisis-affected children and adolescents around the world.
Education lifts millions out of poverty, but because the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out gains made in recent decades, a holistic approach to providing education in crises is crucial, says German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Svenja Schulze.
In 2021, COVID-19 continued to plague the world – a world already burdened by armed conflicts, climate-induced disasters and forced displacement. Communities, nations and people struggled to maintain normalcy in the midst of the abnormal. This was especially notable in the education sector – a sector that is the very foundation for achieving all human rights and all Sustainable Development Goals.
COVID-19 has upended our world, threatening our health, destroying economies and livelihoods, and deepening poverty and inequalities. It also created the single largest disruption to education systems that the world has ever seen.
Helen Grant became actively involved in politics in 2006 and was elected as Member of Parliament for the Kent constituency of Maidstone & The Weald at the 2010 General Election.
The statistics are dire: One in three women have experienced a form of gender-based violence in their lifetime, be it sexual violence, physical violence, or child marriage. The message is clear: Women and girls deserve a safer, brighter future – free from gender-based violence.
Education is under attack in Cameroon. As one of the most complex humanitarian crises in the world unfolds, Education Cannot Wait’s director Yasmine Sherif and the Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, say the children are pawns for grown men in a political conflict.