Hello, this is Kasmira. Yesterday morning, cheers rang out from Geneva's International Conference Centre as a handful of states and private sector organisations announced million-dollar pledges to help children in conflict and other disaster-hit countries continue their education – and support the teachers providing it.
In what has otherwise been a gloomy climate for humanitarian and development aid, Education Cannot Wait's replenishment, which met 90 per cent of its target, is a shot in the arm – even if the 10 million students it intends to reach only represents a fraction of those unable to go to school.
At the event, humanitarian and development leaders called on the international community to fight for the fundamental right to education. |
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Education Cannot Wait (ECW), a UN-backed global fund for education in emergencies, said it reached $541.6 million of its $600m target at a replenishment conference in Geneva on Thursday, despite a tough aid backdrop that has often sidelined learning from humanitarian funding priorities.
Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway, Canada, Switzerland, Ireland, EU, and Japan were among the main public donors to repledge to ECW, which aims to reach 10 million of the most vulnerable children in adolescents in crisis-hit settings under its 2027-2030 strategy.
New pledges totalled around $405m, with the remaining amount already secured through previous multi-year commitments.
The United States, a founding member of ECW which was contributing $60m a year before 2025, was absent from the funding round – as were some other previous donors, including Denmark and the Lego Foundation, its largest private sector donor, which has given around $65m to date.
It comes in a challenging climate for aid funding, as many countries have scaled back spending and the humanitarian system has undergone a major reset. Maysa Jalbout, ECW’s executive director, said that ECW raising 90 per cent of its target was a “signal of confidence” in its work.
Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.
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Here’s what else is happening
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❝To weather the funding crisis, Geneva should tap into its greatest strength
Geneva’s answer to the funding crisis may lie less in finding new money than in better connecting the organisations, skills and capital already on its doorstep, writes Thomas Egli, founder and chief executive of the Geneva Forum
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