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Education Cannot Wait

ECW

New report warns of ‘massive human tragedy’ for refugee children

A new report from UN global fund Education Cannot Wait (ECW) warns there are 224 million children and adolescents now in desperate need of education support: around 72 million are out of school because of conflict, crisis, and other emergencies.

Yasmine Sherif, ECW’s Executive Director, spoke to UN News’s Abdelmonem Makki about the fundraising challenge of helping the huge influx or refugees fleeing into Chad from Sudan, as well as the continuing crisis for girls’ education in Afghanistan.

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© Courtesy of Somaya Faruqi

Digital ambition: How one Afghan student plans to get girls back to school

Somaya Faruqi is one of the lucky ones. She managed to escape from Afghanistan in August 2021, just as the Taliban overran the country’s capital. Today, while the 20-year-old engineering student pursues a degree in the US, her former classmates back home have been banned from the classroom. In support of this week’s Education Cannot Wait conference in Geneva and its call for learning support in emergencies, Somaya has been speaking to UN News’s Daniel Johnson.
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