Syrian children in an internally displaced people camp in Lebanon. Credit: ECW Choufany

By Joyce Chimbi
NEW YORK & NAIROBI, Jan 24 2025 (IPS)

A report released today on the International Day of Education sounds alarm as the number of school-aged children in crisis worldwide requiring urgent support to access quality education reaches a staggering 234 million—an estimated increase of 35 million over the past three years fueled by intensifying armed conflict, forced displacements, more frequent and severe weather and climatic events, and other crises.

According to the State of Education for Crisis-Affected Children and Adolescents: Access and Learning Outcomes, Global Estimates 2025 Report by Education Cannot Wait (ECW), a silent global emergency is festering as nearly a quarter of a billion crisis-affected children could be left behind the opportunity of a quality education.

“I wish I could wish you a happy International Day of Education. We have just released our Global Estimates Report 2025 showing the state of education for children and adolescents who are suffering armed conflicts, climate disasters and forced displacement. Today, we have a total number of 234 million children across over 50 armed conflict countries and contexts who do not access a quality education,” said Yasmine Sherif, ECW’s Executive Director.

“When will the world listen? We are about to hit a quarter of a billion children who cannot access a quality education while they are trying to survive in the midst of very extreme, brutal armed conflicts, brutal climate disasters or being on flight as refugees and forcibly displaced.”

Of these, 85 million, or 37 percent, are already out of school due to intersecting crises. Girls make up more than half of these children (52 percent); over 20 percent are children with disabilities, and 17 percent are forcibly displaced (this includes 13 percent who are internally displaced and 4 percent who are refugees and asylum seekers). Around 75 percent of the children with disabilities, an estimated 12.5 million, are affected by high-intensity crises. These are ECW’s top priority groups.

“The rest will go to school and sit behind a desk with no school supplies, no school feeding, no reading or learning and no mental health and psychosocial services. We are speaking about extreme learning poverty. It is a disaster that is worsening from one year to the next,” Sherif emphasised.

The transition to secondary school is still a right denied to too many crisis-affected children, as nearly 36 percent of children of lower-secondary and 47 percent of upper-secondary school-aged children are unable to access education. But even when in school, many are falling behind. Only 17 percent of crisis-affected primary school-aged children are able to read by the end of primary school.

The report exposes the scale and spread of the global education crisis, provides trends over time, and supports evidence-based policymaking. The 2025 Global Estimates is the third iteration of the insightful study, first published in 2022. Today, nearly half of the crisis-affected school-aged children globally live in sub-Saharan Africa, where the road to education is long and winding. Children in the sub-region are amongst those left furthest behind.

Overall, 50 percent of out-of-school crisis-affected children, or 42 million, are concentrated in just five protracted crises in Sudan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Pakistan. In 2024, Sudan experienced Africa’s most severe education crisis as armed conflict affected most of the country.

Sherif stressed that climate change and education are intrinsically linked, emphasizing that “while the climate-induced disasters are man-made in the global North, the ones paying the price are the people in the global South. They are the ones we have to provide with education because their education is being disrupted. Where, like in Pakistan, schools have been destroyed by floods, we need to rebuild back better so that the schools can withstand climate shocks.”

Globally, ECW identified an estimated 234 million school-aged children and adolescents across 60 countries affected by crises. This figure defines “school-aged as one year before the legal age of entry in primary until the expected age of completion of secondary school. Widening the focus to children aged 3 years until the legal age of secondary school completion, the figure stands at 277 million.”

Despite these growing needs, the report raises concerns that humanitarian education aid funding has stagnated and, the share of total Official Development Assistance allocated to education has even declined in recent years. Stressing that failing to act perpetuates cycles of hunger, violence, disasters, extreme poverty, gender inequality, exploitation and human rights violations.

In humanitarian crises, access to quality education is not only a fundamental right; it is also lifesaving and life-sustaining. With crises intensifying and global conflicts doubling in five years, the need for action is greater than ever. Reaching all of these children requires urgent, additional financing to scale up results. ECW stresses that it is supporting Multi-Year Resilience Programmes in the majority of these crisis contexts and that all that is required to expand these programmes and reach more children with a quality holistic education is additional financing.

“The world invests more in military expenditures than in development, more in bombs than in schools. This is a call to action. As a global community, unless we start investing in the young generation—their education and future—we shall leave behind a legacy of destruction. Over USD 2 trillion are invested globally and annually in war machinery, all while a few hundred billion dollars could secure a quality education annually for children and their teachers in crises. It is time to drop the arms race and sprint for the human race,” Sherif argues.

As children cannot wait for wars to end or for the climate crisis to be resolved to have the opportunity, and their right, to learn and thrive, as by then, it would be too late, ECW urgently calls for USD 600 million in additional funding to reach at least 20 million crisis-affected girls and boys with the safety, opportunity, and hope of a quality education by 2026, accelerating progress towards realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Behind the numbers are children inside damaged walls of classrooms, makeshift refugee settlements, and communities torn apart by war and disaster, desperately holding on to the hope that education will help them to realize their dreams. Additional funding will facilitate access to a level of holistic education that is lifesaving and life-sustaining. According to the UN, there is a USD 100 billion annual financing gap to achieve the education targets in low- and lower-middle-income countries outlined in the SDGs.

Quality learning opportunities delivered through a whole-of-child approach keep the world’s most vulnerable children out of harm’s way, protecting them from human trafficking, sexual exploitation and being forcibly recruited into militia groups. For young minds exposed to armed conflict and climatic catastrophes, education provides a sense of normalcy, critical protection, and services such as psychosocial and menstrual hygiene support for adolescent girls, and restores hope amid the most challenging circumstances towards the best possible learning outcomes.

The global fund for education in protracted crises and emergencies works with partners such as national governments, United Nations agencies, international NGOs and grassroots organizations to deliver quality education to crisis-affected children, no matter who or where they are. Reaching over 11.4 million crisis-affected children with the safety, opportunity, and hope of a quality education.

IPS UN Bureau Report