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New education fund to be launched at upcoming UN World Humanitarian Summit

Xinhua, May 17, 2016 Adjust font size:

At next week's World Humanitarian Summit, a new "Education Cannot Wait" fund will be launched to provide education to 20 million displaced children worldwide, Gordon Brown, the UN Special Envoy for Global Education, said on Monday.

"This is a lost generation we must help urgently. We live in a world where refugee needs are not temporary, with many spending more than a decade out of country," said the former British prime minster.

"For too long we have neglected the education of young people in conflict zones - at the cost of making youth the recruits for terrorist groups and their parents the most likely to leave and seek a better future for their children in Europe or America," he said.

The fund, which seeks to raise 3.85 billion U.S. dollars from some 100 donors in the public and private sectors over the next five years, will offer up to five years of education to displaced children.

"While it is officially called Education Cannot Wait, the new fund is about HOPE - as it is truly a humanitarian operation for the provision of education in emergencies," said Brown.

The fund has been three years in the making and it was inspired by the refugee crisis in Syria.

It will build on the recent Syrian initiative promising one million Syrian refugees schooling in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan but it will also occur in Nepal where 900,000 children are out of school because of the earthquake emergency, in South Sudan where one third of children are denied schooling and in Nigeria where Boko Haram have closed 5,000 schools.

World leaders from more than 100 countries will attend the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit on May 23-24 in Istanbul, Turkey. Endit