Education is a human right – my first visit to the US as Special Envoy for Girls’ Education

On Friday this week negotiations were concluded for the annual global gender equality conference, Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). I was proud to represent Her Majesty’s Government at CSW in New York on my first official visit to the United States as Special Envoy for Girls’ Education, before visiting Washington DC for meetings with key partners, including USAID and the World Bank.

My mission in New York was to shine a spotlight on the wide-ranging, transformational impacts of girls’ education and to underscore the UK’s continued commitment to this agenda, led by our Prime Minister. Against the tragic backdrop of war in Ukraine, and ongoing conflicts across the globe, it was important that I met partners from the international community to keep girls’ education firmly on the agenda.

Right now, we are witnessing atrocious Russian military attacks on schools in Ukraine, with 400 schools damaged and 64 totally destroyed, according to latest reports. I met Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait, the global fund for education in emergencies, to learn more about ECW’s rapid response in Ukraine. The UK is a founding member and leading donor to ECW, supporting emergency responses to the world’s most difficult crises.

I was pleased to join Yasmine at a roundtable with Rida and Victoria, two members of the ‘Youth 4 Education in Emergencies’ board, to hear their perspectives on the current global education crisis.?

On 23 March, the world was devastated by news from the Taliban that teenage girls would not be permitted to return to school, as previously promised: yet another example of why sustained, international cooperation on education as a human rights issue must be at the forefront of our minds. I was privileged to attend the Group of Friends of Women in Afghanistan session at the United Nations on 15 March, where I heard moving testimony from Afghan women about their experiences leaving the country. I was inspired by the consensus among parties that the UN can, and must, do more than one right thing at once. Sadly, we are living in a world of protracted and emerging crises, including those caused by climate change. I will do everything I can as Special Envoy for Girls’ Education to advocate for education as a lifeline, a safe space, and a protection tool for children in times of crisis: it must be protected as a basic human right, just like water and shelter.

In New York, I met the UN Girls’ Education Initiative and UNICEF, to discuss the Secretary-General’s upcoming Transforming Education Summit. I urged partners across the UN to use the Summit to highlight the ongoing learning crisis, felt particularly acutely by girls, caused by Covid-19. With such extreme learning losses, the world is at real risk of losing a whole generation of girls, and many will already have dropped out of school due to poverty, violence, child marriage, or early pregnancy. The international community must work together to achieve the G7-agreed global targets, of getting 40 million more girls in school, and 20 million more girls reading by age 10, in low- and lower-middle income countries, by 2026. The shadow education pandemic rages on, but we must bring it into the light and work together to put an end to it.

In Washington DC, I was pleased to continue discussions on the Transforming Education Summit with education research experts from the Brookings Institute, Global Partnership for Education, Malala Fund, and more. We agreed that without concerted global action, based on research and evidence, millions of girls would lose their chance of getting an education forever. The UK-funded Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel report, written by experts including Jaime Saavedra, Global Education Director at the World Bank, is a concrete example of practical, evidence-based solutions: read more here.

I emphasised with partners at USAID, the Department of State, and the World Bank, the Prime Minister’s continued commitment to girls’ education. Together with UK Gender Envoy, Alicia Herbert, I outlined the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s ‘3 Es’ approach to gender equality policy: educating girls, empowering women, ending violence. We agreed that understanding the intersectionality of these issues is key for effective interventions.

My visit to the US now over, I look forward to continued, close cooperation with the UN, the US Government and the international community, working together toward gender equality and girls’ education, including in times of crisis.

Education is a human right, which must be protected.??

#CSW66 #UnitedNations #WashingtonDC #EducationinEmergencies