The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on Tuesday expressed concern over drop in aid for education in the Sub-Saharan African region.

The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, while announcing the findings of UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, warned that the drop in aid was putting global goals at risk.

The UNESCO policy paper, ‘Aid to Education is Stagnating and Not Going to Countries Most in Need’ also voiced concern over skewed allocations by donors leading to aid not reaching places it is most needed.

“Sub-Saharan Africa, home to over half of the world’s out-of-school children currently receives less than half the aid to basic education it used to in 2002, and only 26 per cent of the total aid to basic education globally.

“This contrasts to the 22 per cent allocation to the northern Africa and western Asia region, where nine per cent of children are out of school.” Bokova said.

Calling for urgent action to rectify the problems, the UNESCO chief urged donors to “reverse the move away from education” and focus their attention on campaigns such as the Global Partnership for Education Replenishment campaign.

The campaign is seeking to raise 3.1 billion dollars between 2018 and 2020 and programmes such as the Education Cannot Wait fund (established in 2016) that aims to raise 3.85 billion dollars by 2020, with the potential to transform the delivery of education in emergencies.

She regretted that aid allocations to education fell for the sixth year in a row, and called on the donor community to focus more attention on the vital sector, especially in countries where needs were the greatest.

According to a policy paper by UNESCO, ‘Global Education Monitoring Report,’ total aid to education stands at 12 billion dollars – four per cent lower than the figure in 2010.

“Aid remains far short of what is needed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4, putting our commitments at risk,” the Director-General of UNESCO, said.

“Resources need to be multiplied by at least six to achieve our common education goals and must go to countries most in need,” she cautioned, calling on donors not to shift their attention away from the poorest countries. (NAN)

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