UNITED NATIONS, Oct 28 (NNN-BIA) – Education Cannot Wait (ECW), yesterday, appealed to donors to significantly increase financial support, for a robust collective humanitarian-development nexus response, including urgent funding for education.
ECW Director, Yasmine Sherif, who has just returned from the first all-women UN mission to Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, said, at least one billion U.S. dollars is urgently needed for a three-year period by organisations working in the education sector.
Even before the most recent humanitarian crisis, 4.2 million children were not enrolled in school in Afghanistan. And 10 million girls are yet to return to school, she said.
While the majority of schools were closed in Afghanistan, during 2020-2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most primary schools for both girls and boys have reopened, since the Taliban takeover in Aug. With regards to secondary education, girls’ education has resumed in some provinces, she said.
“UN member states, donors and humanitarian organisations, as well as, crisis-sensitive development organisations, must remain engaged and act together now, to support children, teachers, educators and the Afghan people, with education at the centre of the response, because education is their future and the future of the country,” she said.
It is important that teachers are paid their salaries, said the director of the ECW, the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.
To date, the ECW has invested 45 million dollars to support the education of girls, boys and adolescents in Afghanistan, said the agency.– NNN-BIA
