Securing Education for Tigray Learners
Every child reserves the right to education (rights of the child), they deserve to be safe from all forms of conflict and have secure access to quality education. However, the children in the Tigray region of Ethiopia have had these rights snatched from them as a result of an ongoing conflict between the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. According to UNICEF (2020), 2.3 million children are internally displaced in Tigray and in need of humanitarian assistance. Of this population, 1.4 million of them are out-of-school (UNOCHA, 2021) and all 2500 schools in Tigray have been closed since March 2020 (UNICEF Ethiopia, 2021). In October 2020, Ethiopian schools began a gradual reopening after Covid-19 related closures in March 2020 (UNICEF Ethiopia, 2020), but Tigray schools have remained closed because a majority of them are damaged by the war or being used as military facilities (UNOCHA, 2021). Humanitarian organizations led by UNICEF and Save the Children have tried to alleviate this situation by delivering school-in-a-carton and early childhood development kits to learners but their work is severely stunted by inadequate funding. Of its $10.4 million budget for education, UNICEF received less than twenty percent (Unicef Ethiopia. Tigray Preparedness and Response Plan. March, 2021).
Therefore, we call on the Ethiopian Ministry of Education and new private donors, namely Sunshine Investment Group, Dangote Group, and Ethiopian Airlines, to ensure the continued education of Tigrayian children by signing the 2015 Safe Schools Declaration and making financial commitments for the provision of learning materials respectively.
