By Fazeena Saleem
DOHA: Policy-makers and the civil society were yesterday urged to adopt determined approaches to accelerate access to education for the most marginalised children in the world.
A fresh call was made by
H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of the Education Above All (EAA), to governments and donors urging them to keep their promises to the 58 million children who are denied primary education.
“Every child denied a primary education is one child too many. The children who remain out of school are the most marginalised, and aretherefore the most in need of assistance. If we break our promise again, we are putting our dignity at risk,” she said addressing a plenary session on the second day of the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE 2014).
On the on the sidelines of WISE 2014, EAA together with UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, yesterday launched a four-year education pilot project in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. Sheikha Moza and UNHCR’s Assistant High Commissioner Janet Lim witnessed the the launch of the project The project will seek to address all factors that prevent refugees in the camp from receiving education, such as health and nutrition, livelihood, food security, water and sanitation and energy.
Following a visit in 2012 to the Kakuma refugee camp, Sheikha Moza worked with UNHCR to establish a model education programme. Kakuma is one of the largest refugee camps in the world, serving more than 170,000 refugees who fled from neighbouring countries due to dire circumstances.
The session, ‘The Unfinished Agenda’, discussed what to be done post-UN Millennium Development Goals, which includes achieving universal primary education which is supposed to be complete in 2015.
Speaking about what is essential to assure universal primary education, Sheikha Moza said, “What we need is political will. We need to commit to the principle that education should be at the centre of development goals, as an enabler of all other areas of development. Once we have that commitment, we can come together to make it happen by galvanising partners, getting the right aid architecture, getting resources to the most marginalised and securing better accountability from all parties.”
She also introduced a global call-to-action to lend thousands of voices to an online Thunderclap on November 13. Individuals can sign up to donate a tweet or post to the cause via a link on the EAA and Educate A Child websites (educationaboveall.org and educateachild.org, respectively).
Founded by Sheikha Moza in 2012, EAA is a global initiative that provides educational opportunities, with a special commitment to communities facing poverty and crisis.
The Peninsula
