Jim Cunningham – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2016-01-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what (a) financial and (b) material support her Department is providing to facilitate the provision of education for children in conflict zones; and if she will make a statement.
Mr Nick Hurd
Draft answer
The UK is one of the biggest bilateral donors to basic education in low income countries. DFID has bilateral education programmes in 21 Low Income Countries, some of which are fragile or conflict affected. Between 2010 and 2015 DFID supported 11m children in school across these 21 countries. DFID has again pledged, in our manifesto commitments, to support 11m girls and boys with a decent education between 2015 and 2020. Through our flagship £355 million Girls’ Education Challenge we will enable up to 1 million of the world’s most marginalised girls to benefit from an education of sufficient quality and transform their lives, including countries such as Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria.
DFID is supporting improvements to how the international community provides education in emergencies, including leadership to establish the ‘No Lost Generation’ Initiative to provide over 251,000 Syrian children with education inside Syria and in the region. At the Conference on Supporting Syria and the Region that will be held in London this week, we want the international community to agree a new goal that all Syrian refugee children and affected host country children are in education – formal school or non-formal – by the end of 2016/17. At the Conference our ambition is that international donors, governments from countries in the region hosting refugees, non-governmental organisations and the private sector come together to agree a set of reciprocal financial and policy commitments. This will be a new model for providing education to children in a protracted crisis.
DFID is also financing, with partners, a technical design process for a new Global Platform and Financing Facility for education in emergencies to improve how education is delivered globally in crisis. It is envisaged that this new Platform will be launched at the World Humanitarian Summit in May.
