MEPs from the European Parliament’s Committees on Human Rights (DROI) and on Development (DEVE) discussed, on Tuesday 7 September ways in which the European Union can step up its efforts to promote the UN goal of education for all and mitigate the worrying impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on children’s education around the world. A future initiative report will be prepared.
Ensuring quality and inclusive education for all is one of the SDGs and a priority for the DEVE committee, stressed Norbert Neuser (S&D, Germany).
This is reflected in a report on education in times of pandemic, in which the Parliament stressed that education plays a key role in breaking the vicious circle of poverty and that development and development cooperation policies must include a greater share of programmes dedicated to the education of children. The Parliament’s report on development programmes and assistance in education stressed that education is essential to achieving all the SDGs.
The European Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen, “our representative in the global partnership for education” (see EUROPE 12773/18), recently proposed to increase the share of total funding available for education cooperation from 7 to 10%, Mr Neuser recalled. Mr Neuser said that the NDICI-Global Europe financial instrument should be able to contribute to the provision of basic social services, including education in the partner countries.
David Lega (EPP, Sweden), Co-Chair of the Intergroup on Children’s Rights and rapporteur for the AFET and DROI committees, stressed that “in many developing countries, school is a shelter, a real refuge, especially for girls”, for children who might otherwise be recruited by the army or married off early.
In particular, he suggests: - campaigning to combat violence against children, provide hotlines and increase funding for development programmes; - fighting online child sexual abuse; - creating specific measures to combat mental disorders in children; - ensuring that children in detention and in various institutions can receive visits and information from trained experts; - informing children of the effects of the coronavirus “and the reasons for all these extremely restrictive measures”.
UNICEF’s Global Chief of Education, Robert Jenkins, reported on the ‘Mission Recovering Education’ initiative, launched with the World Bank and the IMF. He advised to: - make the reopening of schools a priority at the heart of countries’ recovery plans; - “seize this opportunity to transform education in low- and middle-income countries and reach all children for a modern skills-based education”; - increase the budget for education and international aid to education to enable the successful reopening and transformation of education systems. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)