The Huffington Post – Justin van Fleet, PhD
“Today is an important day. The launch of the Sustainable Development Goals signals a historic moment in the fight against poverty, disease and suffering and the fight for equity, equality and justice. In the push to get every last child access to at least a basic education however, the last few years have been tough. Financing has continued to decline and the number of children out of school is on the rise. Developing aid to education is down ten percent. Domestic spending is declining or stagnant in some of the countries most in need of progress. Conflict and emergencies has resulted in the largest displacement of children since WWII with many out of school for their entire childhood as less than 2% of humanitarian funding goes to education. We stopped making progress and started going backwards. Nearly 60 million of the most vulnerable children in our world are still denied access to at least the basic education that could save them from the worst forms of poverty and exploitation. Even more adolescents are not in education. And hundreds of millions leave school having not mastered even the most basic skills.”(more)