Education Cannot Wait when it comes to responding to the regional crisis resulting from the armed conflict in Sudan

2024-04-15 02:59:04

NEW YORK, March 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — ECW Executive Director Yasmine Sherif Statement on the One-Year Anniversary of Hostilities in Sudan

The conflict in Sudan is now one of the worst in the world, with millions of children and young people bearing the brunt within and across the Sudanese border.

As we mark the one-year anniversary of this brutal conflict, we call on world leaders to ensure that all girls and boys affected by the conflict have access to life-saving, quality education. Their hope and their future depend on it.

Sudan is experiencing a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. Without urgent international action, this catastrophe could spread throughout the country and have even more devastating effects on neighboring countries as refugees flee across borders into neighboring countries.

The brutal conflict continues to claim innocent lives: over 14,000 children, women and men have reportedly been killed. According to the United Nations, half of Sudan’s population – 25 million people, including 14 million children – are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. An estimated 5 million people are one step away from starvation.

Sudan is also the world’s largest displacement crisis today. Since April 15, 2023, more than 8 million people have been displaced inside and outside Sudan, including 4 million children.

Most schools across the country are closed or struggling to reopen, leaving nearly 19 million school-age children at risk of losing their education. For comparison: That’s more children at risk than the entire population of Finland, Ireland and Norway combined.

As a global fund for education in emergencies and long-term crises based at the United Nations, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and our global strategic partners responded quickly, flexibly and in a coordinated manner to give girls and boys affected by this complex conflict the security, hope and opportunity for a quality education.

ECW has so far committed $10 million to address the educational needs of refugees in the region, with initial emergency grants in the Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia and South Sudan were announced. Under Sudan We have committed $28 million, including a $5 million grant announced in August 2023, that will provide more than 86,000 girls and boys access to an inclusive, quality education.

But these investments are simply not enough. We must increase global funding for education in all of the world’s forgotten hot spots, in countries like Sudan, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Sahel, South Sudan and many others. In total, more than 224 million girls and boys are having their futures ripped away from them by armed conflict, forced displacement, climate change and other protracted crises around the world.

This not only threatens global security and efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, but is also an affront to their humanity. Without safe places to learn and develop, girls face a range of serious risks, including child marriage, sexual violence, human trafficking and forced labour. The boys have no chance and risk forced recruitment as child soldiers, forced labor and other violations of their human rights. It is an impossible, never-ending cycle of violence, displacement, poverty, hunger, chaos and insecurity.

They receive nutritious meals through school feeding programs. In gender-equal classrooms, they have a safe place to learn. With psychological and psychosocial support, they find a way to regain their dignity and build strong, resilient communities. It is a systems-wide approach that puts children first in our investments in sustainable development and puts humanity first in our global efforts to end wars and build a better future for future generations.

Building on today’s calls High-level conference for Sudan and its neighborsdem African Year of Education and other critical efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, we are calling on public donors, the private sector and philanthropic foundations to urgently provide $600 million in renewed support for the ECW Strategic Plan 2023-2026 to mobilize. With a total of $1.5 billion, we can reach 20 million children and young people.

In South Sudan, education means for Living Sunday, a young teenage mother who, against all odds, has resumed her education, a chance to “change my life.” In Ethiopia, where ongoing drought made worse by climate change has disrupted the education of an entire generation, this means that Nakurchel, 12, attended school for the first time in her life. In her own words: “Education gave me wings to fly.” More needs to be done: in sub-Saharan Africa, only one in nine children can read a simple text.

Sudan cannot wait. Africa cannot wait. The rest of the world must be impatient to comply with their demands.

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