Menu

Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, has called on world leaders to provide $1.5 billion in urgent funding to support the organisation and its strategic partners in reaching 20 million crisis-impacted children and adolescents in the next four years.

ECW's new Case for Investment and its 2023-2026 Strategic Plan set out a new ambition for the UN’s breakthrough global fund, which has mobilized over $1 billion and directly supported nearly 7 million children and adolescents since its inception in 2016, and an additional 31.2 million with its Covid-19 response.

Recent analysis from ECW indicates that as many as 222 million crisis-impacted girls and boys are in need of urgent education support. More than 78 million of these children are out of school altogether, with approximately 120 million not attaining minimum proficiencies in reading or math.

Funding appeals for education in emergencies have spiked in recent years. With the war in Ukraine, jumps in forced displacement, the specter of famine across the Sahel and East Africa, and other crises, education in emergencies funding appeals reached $2.9 billion in 2021, up from $1.4 billion the previous year, according to analysis from ECW’s Annual Results Report.

Leaders are stepping up, but large gaps remain. Currently, funding for education in emergencies only accounts for 2-4% of global humanitarian funding. While 2021 saw a record-high US$645 million in education appeal funding, the overall funding gap spiked by 17%, from 60% in 2020 to 77% in 2021.