OTTAWA—The world must do more to educate children forced from their homes as it grapples with the epic level of humanitarian disaster unfolding across the globe, says Canada’s development minister.
Marie-Claude Bibeau said Monday, May 23, that too little of the already insufficient amount of global humanitarian assistance is being directed to educate children forced to flee their homes.
Unless more resources are redirected, more children will lose out on education and become drawn to extremism, she said.
“It’s a matter of peace and security,” Bibeau said from the first World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul.
Bibeau was representing Canada at the first major summit that is trying to reshape the world’s aid architecture to help it better deal with the estimated 125 million people that require humanitarian assistance, including 60 million forced from their homes.
The two-day gathering was an effort to address what the United Nations says is the most pervasive degree of humanitarian disaster since the end of the Second World War.
Despite the soaring needs in places such as Syria and Sub-Saharan Africa, the U.N. faces a $15-billion funding shortfall in humanitarian funding.
