A person shows a message at a rally protesting against the interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla by the Israeli forces, in Milan, Italy, 3 October 2025. (Keystone/EPA/Daniel Dal Zennaro)

In Geneva, countries deliver recommendations to strengthen international humanitarian law. In Geneva this week, government experts will present practical recommendations to strengthen the implementation of international humanitarian law ahead of leaders meeting next month in Amman to support the Geneva Conventions.

A group of Rohingya refugee students attend school at a makeshift camp in Kutupalong, Ukhiya Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, 15 June 2023. (Keystone/EPA/Monirul Alam)

📚WANTED: $600M FOR SCHOOLING IN CRISES. With 258 million children affected by war and other crises, and a third cut off from school altogether, a UN-backed global fund will appeal this week to donors for $600m to help get them back into classrooms, as aid for education has been pushed to the back of governments’ priority lists.

The Geneva meet. Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and its host, Switzerland, will convene around 400 government officials and international organisations in Geneva on 5 November to drum up support for its 2027-2030 campaign. The fund, hosted by Unicef in Geneva, aims to provide schooling support for 10 million crises-affected children and teenagers, including refugees, internally displaced, and children with disabilities.

Pledges trickle in. Countries including Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Switzerland have pledged close to $300m so far, with other governments and private sector organisations expected to announce their commitments this week. But the backdrop has changed drastically since its last replenishment round three years ago.

In numbers. A recent report from the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies, which brings together actors from the international Geneva community, found that humanitarian funding for education fell to US$1.29bn in 2025 – down 20 per cent from its 2023 peak.

What they said. "Education funding has shrunk significantly due to pressure on the humanitarian system to hyper-prioritise, with the sector suffering more than others," said Charles Apotheker, a humanitarian adviser at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and a adviser to the Swiss co-chairmanship of ECW's executive committee. Nevertheless, he remains “cautiously optimistic” ahead of Thursday’s replenishment.

Finance 2.0. The buzzword of this week's event and the focus of one of its panels is innovative finance. However, EiE Hub’s executive director Petra Heusser remains wary about the volumes it can provide: “Emergency settings often come with more risk than private actors sometimes have an appetite for...So from where I'm sitting, looking to new solutions is important, but we also need to be clear that grants are very much needed for emergency settings.” Read her opinion piece published in our newsletter below.

Funds already put to work. In August, ECW granted $22m to restore education in Sudan. Working with Save the Children and local and national partners, the three-year programme aims to reach nearly 200,000 crisis-affected children and adolescents across Gedaref, West Darfur and South Kordofan.

⛑️IFRC’S FUNDING ASK. ECW isn't the only actor in town tapping donors for more money this week. On Friday, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent will also host the replenishment conference for its Disaster Response Emergency Fund, with the aim of reaching CHF200m in capacity by 2030. 

🇺🇸PRE-MIDTERM POSITIONING. Ahead of a possible reversal of President Trump’s Republican Party in Tuesday’s Congressional elections, few US voters will be thinking about Washington’s policy toward international organisations.

But its engagement within UN agencies reflects the administration’s political and economic agenda beyond any reshuffling on Capitol Hill after this week’s poll.

Marker. The recent appointment of Luke Lindberg, a Trump nominee, as the head of the World Food Programme (WFP), secures Washington’s monopoly at the helm of the agency, as the agency struggles to get enough funding to people in need, including in Sudan.

WFP, which earlier this month announced cutting food aid to Gaza, has come under growing criticism for its contract with Palantir over data access.

On the radar. Leadership roles at the International Telecommunications Union, whose secretary general, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, a Biden-era appointee, received the backing last year of the Trump administration to remain for a second term, have also been on Washington’s radar.

In Doha this month, the ITU’s plenipotentiary conference will decide if Jennifer Warren, a Washington nominee, will assume a seat on the ITU’s Radio Regulation Board, a body governing who uses radio frequencies, and for what purposes including mobile networks, commercial satellites and military communications systems.

Complex relationships. Elsewhere, the International Organization for Migration, cash-strapped by aid cuts and led by another Biden nomination, has navigated its relationship with the White House by assisting in the arrival of deportees from the US to third countries.

And at the UN refugee agency, its new deputy high commissioner, a US diplomat, has been restricted by the White House from working with US officials, after the agency picked her over a Trump nominee.

— Kasmira Jefford and Paula Dupraz-Dobias

❝Education is being squeezed out of humanitarian funding – just when children need it most. As aid budgets shrink, education must not be treated as expendable just because its life-saving impact is less immediately visible, writes Petra Heusser, executive director of the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies.