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Education Cannot Wait (ECW) announced today a US$3 million first emergency response to support education in emergencies efforts for girls and boys who are affected by the escalating crisis in the Western Coastal governorates of Yemen, which are currently hosting more than one third of the 3.6 million internally displaced population in the country.  

The “PlayMatters” partnership will bring the power of learning through play to nearly one million children, teachers and caregivers.  

Mohamed Tua Sin, 15, was in class 9 in Myanmar when he was forced to flee to Bangladesh in late August 2017. Attacks by the Myanmar military forced 740,000 ethnic Rohingya, like Mohamed Tua Sin, to flee their communities in northern Rakhine State and cross the Naf River into Bangladesh. The campaign of ethnic cleansing included countless apparent crimes against humanity.

At 1.30 pm on a balmy October afternoon in Beirut, 12-year old Nour and her friends are congregating outside their school, patiently waiting to be allowed inside. The gates are shut, indicating the school is not yet ready for the second shift, which enrolls only Syrian refugee students like Nour. On the other side of the gate, Lebanese students wait excitedly for the school day to end.

On 25 November 2019, UNESCO’s Member States adopted the first United Nations convention on higher education when the plenary of the 40th session of the General Conference endorsed the Global Convention on Recognition of Qualifications concerning Higher Education.

Today the GEM Report released its 40th policy paper ahead of the UNHCR Global Refugee Forum next month to mark the one-year anniversary of the Global Compact on Refugees. The paper highlights the increasingly important role of cities using education as a lever for the inclusion of people on the move.

In conflicts around the world, female students and educators suffer horrific acts of violence within their schools and universities, including rape, forced marriage, and sexual slavery, said the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) in a report released on the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

The recent endorsements by Morocco, Vietnam, the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu and Ukraine bring the total number of states that have joined the Safe Schools Declaration to 100, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) said today.

The Paris Peace Forum announced yesterday that the Abidjan Principles on the right to education were selected as one of the ten ‘most promising governance projects’ that will be awarded support to scale-up. The Abidjan Principles were selected among 716 projects from 115 countries that applied in the call for projects.

The need for accurate, current and comparable data on education has never been more urgent, with the prospects of reaching Sustainable Development Goal 4 –  a quality education for all by 2030 – far from certain.