The European Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen, was in New York on Monday, 19 September to participate in the UN summit ‘Transforming Education’ (16-19 September) convened by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, which was due to culminate on Monday with financial commitments from world leaders.
At the heart of the summit is Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) - “to ensure equal access to quality education for all and promote lifelong learning opportunities”- and its estimated funding gap of US$200 billion per year globally.
Recalling that the amount dedicated to education in the EU’s external relations budget (NDICI - Global Europe) has “increased from 7% to 13%” for cooperation with Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean for the period up to 2027, Ms Urpilainen expressed the hope that all countries would do the same.
“I really hope that political leaders around the world are able to commit themselves in order to invest more in education. EU is the champion for education and I hope that the rest of the world will follow us”, she said on her Twitter account on Monday afternoon (Brussels time).
The EU spends 10% of its humanitarian aid budget on education in emergencies.
This UN summit is being organised on the occasion of the 77th UN General Assembly (UNGA). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)