WHS to create new financing, coordination mechanism for children's education

A crisis fund for helping children's education will be established at the ongoing World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), a United Nations official said here on Monday.

The creation of a new financing and coordination mechanism -- Education Cannot Wait, an education crisis fund -- to help children go back and stay in schools would be an important outcome of the summit, Sven Jurgenson, vice-president of the UN Economic and Social Council, told reporters on the sidelines of the WHS.

The number of people suffering from humanitarian crises and need help tripled in the past 10 years and among them children are the most vulnerable, Jurgenson said.

Kailash Satyarthi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his decades-long campaign on children's rights, earlier spoke at a forum here on children, "Leaving No Child Unprotected: Child Protection Across the Development and Humanitarian Divide by the Child Fund Alliance, Global March."

Satyarthi called for more concerted response from governments, and better and more effective policy at a global level.

"Children cannot wait," he said. "We have to respond now."

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, who attended the same forum, said only 50 percent of Syrian refugee children are in primary schools and only 25 percent in secondary schools.

Saving and educating children is saving the future of the world, she said.

Experts at the forum urged the international community to work together to raise funds for children's education to 10 percent of total humanitarian funding.

About 124 million children are now out of school, 168 million are toiling as child laborers and 1.2 million are trafficked each year, according to figures released by Global March Against Child Labor, a global movement of trade unions, teachers' unions and other organizations from over 100 countries.

Also attending the forum were representatives from Child Fund Alliance, which groups 11 child-centerd development organizations working in 63 countries to implement long-lasting and meaningful changes for children and families living in poverty. Endit