World leaders committed over USD 826 million to support the education of girls and boys impacted by emergencies and protracted crises. Seventeen donors announced pledges during the Education Cannot Wait (ECW) High-Level Financing Conference, co-convened by the Governments of Switzerland, Colombia, Germany, Niger, Norway, and South Sudan.

These pledges amount to more than half of the USD 1.5 billion required to deliver on ECW’s 2023-2026 Strategic Plan to reach 20 million children and adolescents over the next four years.

An ECW press release highlights the urgent need for quality education for 222 million children worldwide that are impacted by conflict, climate change, forced displacement, and other protracted crises. It welcomes the new pledges as a sign of global commitment to prioritize funding for education in emergencies and protracted crises as the war in Ukraine, global economic uncertainty, and record-high forced displacement and humanitarian crises threaten to reverse development gains across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

With today’s generous contributions, we will be able to reach 10 million crisis-affected children with quality education.

— Yasmine Sherif, ECW Executive Director

The largest new commitment of GBP 80 million comes from the UK, making it ECW’s second-largest donor after Germany. Other donors include Canada, Italy, Qatar, and Spain, as well as the Global Business Coalition and the Zürcher Kantonalbank.

“As a global community, we must unite in our efforts to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals, especially our promise to ensure every girl and every boy is able to go to school and realize their full potential,” said Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of ECW’s High-Level Steering Group. “This is our investment in peace where there is chaos, our investment in economic security where there is uncertainty, and our investment in the hope of children in crises for generations to come.”

ECW is a multi-donor trust fund created by international humanitarian and development actors at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. It is hosted by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The ECW High-Level Financing Conference took place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 16-17 February 2023. Subject to additional anchor investors, the Zürcher Kantonalbank committed to manage a facility that can mobilize continuous and predictable financing to ECW. [ECW Press Release]