A staggering 78 million girls and boys in the world today are “not in school at all” due to conflict, climate disasters and displacement, while tens of millions more do not receive only sporadic teaching – said UN Secretary General António Guterres on Thursday. Supporting a call for more funding for education in emergencies launched by the UN’s Education Cannot Wait global fund, the UN chief insisted in a message video about how no one should be denied their chance to learn.
Today, 222 million children experience a degraded education, Mr. Guterres noted. “No matter who you are, no matter where you live, no matter what obstacles stand in your way, you have the right to a quality education,” he said, in a call for more international efforts. to ensure that the most vulnerable children and young people have a chance to succeed.
In his message to the High-Level Conference on Financing Education Cannot Delay in Geneva, the Secretary-General welcomed the fact that since its creation in 2017, the fund has trained 87,000 teachers and given seven million children in crisis “the education they deserve”.
As pledges from 18 countries and the private sector topped $826 million on the first day of the conference, the UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of the Education High Level Steering Group without delay, Gordon Brown, hailed international support for learning for all as an investment in lasting peace. “We are talking about the most isolated, most forgotten children in the world. We are talking about girls who end up being trafficked or forced into child labor or child marriage,” he continued.
With her own painful story about education in crisis in Afghanistan, Somaya Faruqi explained that although she fled the country when the Taliban took over in August 2021, many of her “sisters” were left behind.
Her friends are now unable to study after being banned from going to class by de facto authorities, said Somaya Faruqi, 20, who keeps in touch with them and works as a women’s rights activist to highlight their spell. “The situation is much worse than what you can see in the news and social media,” she told ONU Info. “Every day, I receive messages from my friends saying that they are being forced into marriage, regardless of their age or consent.” “I feel a deep sense of responsibility to support my sisters who are still in Afghanistan. Every day, I keep in touch with them, even if their situation is not good,” she added.
Somaya Faruqi, originally from Herat, western Afghanistan, is currently studying Mechanical Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA. Her interest in fixing things stems from helping her father fix cars, which sparked an interest in robotics, as the captain of the Afghan Girls’ Robotics Team.
Prior to the August 2021 takeover, “Afghanistan was a place I called home,” she explained, “where I could pursue my dreams and contribute to the development of my community. However, since the Taliban took over, the situation has become dire.”
