Development & Aid, Education, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Poverty & SDGs

DEVELOPMENT: War-Torn Nations in Dire Need of Schools

Eli Clifton

WASHINGTON, Apr 12 2007 (IPS) - Children in so-called conflict affected fragile states (CAFS) represent a disproportionate number of the world’s out-of-school population largely because these countries are under-funded by international aid donors when compared to other low-income countries, says a report released Thursday.

In the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan, for example, over 50 percent of children are out of school but almost no funding has been provided specifically to educate them.

The new report, “Last in Line, Last in School”, released by the Save the Children, a U.S.-based charity, calls attention to the fact that most donor nations and multilateral donors prioritise education-related funding to stable countries instead of those affected by conflict.

“Countries in conflict have a disproportionate number of children out of school,” said Charles McCormack, president and CEO of Save the Children. “These children, and their countries, face a bleak future if wealthy countries, which have promised to give every child the chance to go to school by 2015, do not stand by their word. We know that education determines the prospects of people and their countries. We can not sit by while a whole generation of young people falls through the cracks.”

International efforts to guarantee a primary school education to all children have met with some success. However, that progress has not reached children in CAFS, where half of the world’s out of school population live – even though these countries make up only 13 percent of the world’s population.

Save the Children says that educating children in CAFS in crucial since it can increase their resistance to forced recruitment, exploitation and prostitution, as well as teaching landmine awareness and providing information on disease prevention.

“(Primary education) contributes to economic growth, peace and stability, and promotes critical thinking in citizens and their ability to hold local and national systems to account, paving the way for good governance and institution-building,” says the report.

Despite a dramatic decrease in the number out of out-of-school children in the world, providing aid for education is not a priority in either humanitarian or development aid in CAFS, with donors not filling the nine-billion-dollar financing requirements to meet the Millennium Development Goal of enabling all children to go to primary school by 2015.

Foreign aid for education has targeted middle and low-income countries, while CAFS have received less than a fifth of total education aid.

Even within CAFS, development aid is not prioritised to education, with only four percent of allocated development funds committed to schooling.

More broadly examining the issue of funding for education, Save the Children found that of the 22 donor countries at the 2005 G8 Summit who pledged to contribute to the nine-billion-dollar cost of providing a primary education to every child, only the Netherlands and Norway have contributed their fair share. The United States ranks 20th out of the 22 countries in contributing its share.

However, the U.S. does allocates about three percent of it development aid to education, of which about 40 percent goes to CAFS – primarily Iraq and Afghanistan – a higher percentage than any other donor country.

The report found that only 18 percent of education aid goes to CAFS despite being home to 39 million out of 77 million children missing out on an education.

Donor countries and organisations are often wary to commit aid for education to unstable countries since the affected areas often seem to more urgently need funding for food, security and basic infrastructure.

This superficial analysis, says Save the Children, is incorrect in that these countries need aid programmes that focus on rebuilding long-term education plans and strategies.

The report calls upon donors and multilateral agencies to increase their commitments to conflict-affected countries by 50 percent, increase basic education funding to meet their fair share of the nine-billion-dollar annual financing gap, and ensure that all funding mechanisms are accessible to CAFS.