Education Cannot Wait and the widening education emergency facing children in crisis

Education Cannot Wait and the widening education emergency facing children in crisis | Photo: ECW

Published on 7 May 2026 at 01:51 GMT

By Editorial Team SDG4

Education Cannot Wait sits at the centre of a difficult global question: how education can be protected when war, displacement, climate disasters and long-running instability push children out of classrooms. The UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises is not a school operator in the ordinary sense. It is a financing and coordination mechanism designed to help governments, UN agencies, civil society groups and local partners keep learning going when public systems are under extreme strain. Its work matters now because crisis is no longer a short interruption to education in many countries, but the condition in which millions of children grow up.

The fund’s mandate is focused on crisis-affected children, including refugees, internally displaced children, girls, children with disabilities and children living through conflict or climate-related emergencies. In practical terms, its programmes support temporary learning spaces, teacher support, learning materials, mental health and psychosocial support, catch-up education, school safety and longer-term planning where emergencies have become prolonged. The aim is not only to reopen classrooms after a shock, but to prevent children from losing years of education while humanitarian systems and national authorities struggle to respond.

The scale of need is stark. Education Cannot Wait reported in its 2025 global estimates update that 234 million school-aged children and adolescents in crises require urgent support to access quality education, an increase of about 35 million over three years. It also estimated that 85 million crisis-affected children are out of school. These figures underline why education in emergencies has become a major public-interest issue, not a narrow aid-sector concern.

The organisation was created to address a structural gap in international response. In many emergencies, education has historically been treated as secondary to food, shelter, water and health. Those services are indispensable, but the separation can leave children without routine, protection, learning or safe social environments for months or years. Education Cannot Wait was launched by humanitarian and development actors to bridge that divide, connecting rapid emergency response with multi-year investment in countries facing protracted crises.

That model reflects a broader shift in aid policy. Crises in Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Ukraine, the Sahel, Gaza, the Horn of Africa and other contexts show how displacement and insecurity can outlast traditional emergency funding cycles. A child who misses several years of school is not simply delayed academically. The consequences can include higher risks of child labour, early marriage, recruitment by armed groups, exploitation, social isolation and long-term exclusion from work and civic life. For girls, the barriers are often sharper, particularly where insecurity, poverty and gender norms combine to keep them out of learning.

Lebanon offers a current example of how these overlapping pressures can converge. In April 2026, Education Cannot Wait reaffirmed its partnership with Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education during the first official mission of its new Director, Maysa Jalbout. The visit came as Lebanon faced a severe humanitarian situation, with more than one million people displaced and over 250,000 children across the public school system experiencing disruption to their education. The latest escalation has added to years of economic collapse, the Beirut port explosion and regional conflict, placing further pressure on an education system already under strain.

As part of the response, Education Cannot Wait announced immediate emergency funding focused on the areas most affected by the escalation of hostilities. The support is intended to help ensure safe access to learning, psychosocial support and protection services for vulnerable children. At the same time, the fund said it would begin developing a new multi-year investment, expected to start within six months, to strengthen the resilience of Lebanon’s education system and support sustainable learning outcomes. Together, the emergency response and planned multi-year investment are expected to reach more than 150,000 crisis-affected children and adolescents, with priority given to those most at risk of exclusion.

The Lebanon announcement illustrates the fund’s dual function. It is designed to respond quickly when a crisis disrupts education, but also to connect that emergency response to longer-term planning. The stated priorities for Lebanon, localisation and national ownership, equity and inclusion, learning continuity, well-being and protection, and flexibility, reflect many of the issues that define education in emergencies globally. They also show why education responses depend on more than classroom materials alone. Local partners, national ministries, teachers, protection systems and predictable finance all shape whether children can continue learning in a meaningful way.

The fund’s role is therefore partly financial and partly political. It seeks to mobilise donors, align agencies and keep education visible in humanitarian decision-making. Its programmes work through partners rather than replacing national systems. This is significant because education depends on teachers, language, curriculum, recognition of learning, exams, transport and public administration. In a crisis, these details decide whether a child can actually return to school or whether a temporary activity remains disconnected from any long-term pathway.

The public-interest value of Education Cannot Wait is strongest where it helps make invisible needs measurable. Tracking children’s education needs in emergencies is difficult. Displaced families move across borders or between camps and host communities. Schools may be damaged, occupied, underfunded or inaccessible. Data may be incomplete, politically sensitive or rapidly outdated. By producing global estimates and results reports, the fund contributes to a clearer picture of who is missing from school and where support is falling short. Its work with the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report has also highlighted gaps in how education finance in crisis settings is tracked and reported.

The SDG connection is direct but not simple. SDG 4, quality education, commits governments to inclusive and equitable education, yet many of the children furthest from that goal live in places where normal public-service delivery has been disrupted. Education Cannot Wait also intersects with SDG 5, gender equality, SDG 10, reduced inequalities, and SDG 13, climate action, where conflict, displacement and climate shocks deepen educational exclusion. The point is not that one fund can deliver the goals alone, but that the SDG framework becomes less credible if children in emergencies are treated as exceptions to global education promises.

Climate pressure is becoming more visible in this field. Education Cannot Wait reported that 528,000 children affected by climate-related emergencies received rapid education support in 2023 and 2024, while 3.4 million children benefited from programmes supporting climate adaptation. This reflects a growing reality: floods, droughts, storms and extreme heat are damaging schools, interrupting attendance and forcing families to migrate.

The fund’s 2024 annual results reporting says it has reached 14 million children since inception, with girls making up 51% of those reached and refugee or internally displaced children 43%. Those figures show reach, but they also point to the continuing gap between need and available support. The organisation’s own reporting notes a troubling decline in overall humanitarian funding for education while needs rise because of conflict, displacement and climate-induced disasters.

The Lebanon case also underlines that gap. Maysa Jalbout said during the April 2026 announcement that the needs are far greater than any single actor can meet, and that significant gaps remain despite continuing donor support for quality and inclusive education in the country. Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education, through Minister Rima Karami, also called for collective action and international support, warning that the crisis is creating new needs while threatening wider stability. The appeal was directed not only at donor governments, but also at philanthropic organisations and the private sector.

This is where the limits of the model become important. Education Cannot Wait depends on donor funding and on the operational capacity of partners in difficult environments. It cannot end wars, reopen borders, guarantee teacher salaries across fragile systems or remove the political obstacles that keep children from school. In some settings, access restrictions, attacks on education, insecurity, government weakness or contested authority can limit what any education fund can achieve. The danger is that education financing is asked to compensate for failures of diplomacy, protection and public governance.

There are also tensions around accountability. Working quickly in emergencies is necessary, but speed can make monitoring harder. Multi-year programmes are more suitable for prolonged crises, but they require predictable finance and coordination among actors with different mandates. Local civil society organisations are often closest to affected children, yet they may face the greatest funding uncertainty and administrative burden. A serious assessment of Education Cannot Wait must therefore ask not only how much money is raised, but how decisions are made, how local actors are supported and whether children’s learning outcomes improve over time.

The wider ecosystem matters. UNICEF remains a major actor in emergency education delivery and child protection. UNESCO brings global education data, policy and monitoring capacity. The Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies provides standards and technical guidance across the sector. Save the Children has long worked on education and child rights in humanitarian settings. In Lebanon, UNICEF and Save the Children are also part of the education-sector coordination structure alongside national authorities and civil society partners. These organisations do not replace Education Cannot Wait, but they help define the field in which it operates, from frontline delivery to data, advocacy and standards.

The case for the fund rests on a pragmatic argument: education is not a luxury to be restored after a crisis ends. For children in long emergencies, the crisis may last most of their childhood. A school, even a temporary one, can provide structure, protection, social connection and a route back into recognised learning. That does not make education a substitute for peace, food security or safe housing. It makes it part of a serious humanitarian response.

As global crises become more frequent, longer and more entangled with climate instability, the challenge facing Education Cannot Wait is not only to reach more children. It is to help make education a predictable part of emergency response and recovery, backed by better data, stronger local partnerships and funding that matches the duration of children’s needs. The fund’s central message is embedded in its name, but its real test is practical: whether the international system can treat a displaced or crisis-affected child’s education as urgent before another generation is left behind.

Further information:

https://www.educationcannotwait.org