 We are going to UNICEF as you know is one of the outstanding development agencies in the world. With a very long background, particularly delighted to have Peter Parker who is the Irish director of UNICEF, former minister for development and some of his other colleagues. And this particular event today is part of the Development Matters series which is held in association with and sponsored by Irish aid and we are delighted that Dimhna Hayes is going to say a few words at the beginning to introduce Joe. Thanks very much Tom and just to say welcome to everybody, it is good to see such a strong turnout and I am very happy to be here today and to have the opportunity to introduce Joe Burn to you and Tom has already described what Joe does and Joe is one of the key people behind this new initiative Education Can't Waste which is Education and Emergency Humanitarian Situations and it was launched at the recent Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. So Joe is currently a key member of the UNICEF staff and it goes without saying that education is a key priority for Irish aid and has been a key priority for the program for the beginning and I suppose in Ireland we know very well from our own history of development how important education is. I mean education is the key building block for any community or society which hopes to develop and to evolve and I suppose UNICEF is probably one of our longest standing multilateral aid partnerships and it just struck me, I remember the last time we were campaigning for the Security Council campaign there was a survey in the Irish public as to what did they know about the UN and the two issues that were top of that poll were UNICEF and UN peacekeeping operations and I'd like to acknowledge particularly the role that UNICEF Ireland and again very happy to see Peter Power here has played in bringing the message of what UNICEF does and keeping UNICEF high on the public agenda here in Ireland. I think UNICEF Ireland has done and continues to do an outstanding job for UNICEF and I suppose it's very good timing that we have Joe here to hear about this new initiative because I know in this room for the last and over the last two years we've had a number of discussions on post-2015 and the 2030 agenda and I think everybody here could write a comprehensive essay on the 2030 agenda at this stage but one thing I mean as was the key aspect of the 2030 agenda is this integrative framework that we've identified what are the key components to make any society sustainable and we've identified 17 goals and 169 targets which every country in the world has to achieve and there's no surprise that education is a standalone goal it's one of the 17 goals and when you look at the 169 targets you see the importance of education in so many areas and I suppose following on from the 2030 agenda which is you know Ireland had a key role in co-facilitating we also have a key role in another big process that's taking place in the UN at the moment now I don't know whether you say it's the lack of the Irish that we end up with these big challenging roles but I suppose the fact that we have a track record in delivery means that we keep being asked to do it and it's a great compliment to our ambassador in New York David Dunnell that again he is leading this big process this year which in September hopefully will culminate in a new global agreement on refugees and migration and for those of you who are following what's happening in that process you know that again this very issue of education in emergency humanitarian situations and education for the most vulnerable communities which are dislocated and who are on the margins is probably an under estimate but the importance of continuing to provide education in the most difficult challenging situations I mean there's universal acceptance that this has to be done so I suppose hopefully following universal acceptance there will be universal funding so I think I've said enough but Joe hand the floor over to you because I know everybody here is interested in hearing about this new fund which is in a way I suppose thankfully we're moving on to the implementation phase like we've agreed we know what we have to do and now we're going to tell us how we can do it so Joe I think it's okay before I stand up we're actually going to start with the video okay perfect we have a video perfect we're going to start with the video I don't like the way I look at my feet. I don't feel like I'm a good person. I want to go back to Syria as I did before. I don't want to be a warhead. I don't want to go back home. I don't want to go back. I want to live like I did before. A little over 50 million children are learning and because most disadvantaged children, due to poverty, gender, location, disability, ethnic group or language, are left behind. And because millions of children, and estimated 462 million, they are growing up in places affected by conflict and emergencies. A few weeks ago, I visited Ghazi Antep on the border of Syria and Turkey in Turkey has changed quite dramatically since my visit. I talked to students in the temporary education center that have been put up by UNICEF and the government of Turkey. And they told me about how they had tried to stay in Syria, like Sayah, and continue with their school, but that this had become increasingly difficult, and eventually their families chose to leave, although many remain. And the students I spoke to were really happy to be in school again, because they'd had two years of disruption or being on the move. And at 16, 17 years old, they expected to be getting ready for their final exams and thinking about university. And instead, they didn't know what exams were they going to take. Entrance exams into Turkish universities would require additional study in Turkish. The only way they could take Syrian exams, because many of them wanted to go back to rebuild their country, would mean traveling into the government held areas in Syria. Many of the boys for economic reasons were already working informally to help their families, all faced deep uncertainty and had witnessed violence. And their teachers said they were in need of counseling. And later the same day I met some 11-year-olds, my daughter is 11, so this always moves me, in a community center. They were able to get to the community center a couple of times a week and they were taking some Turkish lessons and playing. One girl told me that her parents had tried to get her into school five times to register, but the process was so complicated. And so she mainly helped her mum with domestic chores. One 11-year-old boy told me he helped his dad fix cars. 11. And as of June 2016, 340,000 Syrian children were in Turkish schools and temporary education centers. But approximately 500,000 remain out of school. It's just in one country. And these stories are repeated. Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, South Sudan, Chad, Central Africa Republic, I could go on. The numbers are staggering. We estimate about 75 million children, just in 35 countries, just 35, are either out of school or have their education disrupted due to conflict and emergency. And 17 million of these children are refugees. These crises are long and protracted, 17 years on average. And for the vast majority of children caught up in emergencies and crisis, education is at best interrupted and at worst never attained. Nearly half are out of school. Others face problems that make learning impossible. Problems like overcrowded classrooms, substandard teaching, attacks on schools and teachers and students. And we know that when a child is displaced for more than six months, there's a high probability that they will remain displaced for up to three years or longer and perhaps never have a chance of getting back into school. A lost generation. And for children on the move, the situation is even more challenging in terms of education. The length of time a child stays in one place can vary across Europe from days to months. Many are unaccompanied minors. For children on the move in Europe, the languages spoken include Arabic, Kurdish, Farsi, Pashtun and a few others. Some children will have received very little education at the point of origin, whereas others will have been in full-time education before they were forced to move. So the diversity of the needs of these children is immense. And for those children that are managing to access some sort of education, like the ones I met in Syria, in Turkey, the chances that this will be accredited and certified are slim or ad hoc, require additional time, money or a dangerous journey. Certification is one of the most complex issues facing children on the move, one that was echoed by the children and teachers that I met. You know, will they take exams? What language, will their education be recognized regardless of whether they make it back home or end up somewhere else? And if you're 16 or 17 and you cannot see an answer to these questions, how do you feel? What choices do you make? These children are losing out on the ability to one day chart their own futures and lend a hand to building more peaceful and stable societies. And the most disadvantaged among them, because they're not all the same, face even greater risks. Early marriage, recruitment into armed groups, labor exploitation. Girls are especially vulnerable. They're 2.5 times more likely to be out of primary school and nine times more likely to be out of secondary school and boys. And we know that children growing up, young children growing up in traumatic environments suffer from something called toxic stress. With potential health problems and development delay. And this is this interrelation between brain development and the environment. The early years is when the brain is rapidly developing and this development is highly influenced by their environment. And the second window of rapid brain development is adolescence. We just think about that in terms of the types of things that these children are witnessing every day when they're on the move or in a situation of an emergency. So with the many, many challenges that these children face, security, shelter, food, health care, why does education matter? If you talk to young people, it's what they want. There was a quote in the New York Times over the weekend from a student in South Sudan who's fleeing from the fighting. And she says, I just want peace, so I go back to school. And a recent study by Save the Children asked children and young people in crisis situations what mattered most to them. And 99% of them said education. So imagine what it feels like to have that opportunity and that hope taken away. Many of you will no doubt be familiar to the benefits that accrue to education, especially for girls. Increased earning, better maternal health, reduced child mortality. Benefits that are essential to rebuilding societies and tackling poverty and intergenerational poverty. Education mitigates the long-term psychosocial impact of conflict and disasters. It provides a sense of stability and normalcy and a safe space to learn and play. Without education, children and youth face increased risk of violence and exploitation from extremists, traffickers and criminals. And we also now know that the likelihood of experiencing violent conflict doubles, doubles in countries with high education inequality. And of course, high education inequality is not just something that happens in poor countries. So in 2009, in the US, the high school dropout rate for students living in low income families was about five times greater than the rate for peers from high income families. And the average dropout rates for black and Hispanic students were two and 2.5 times higher than those of white students. So the US is actually one of the countries with very high levels of education inequality. So just relate that in your mind to what I'm saying about the risk of violent conflict. So there's this clear link between education and violent conflict. And once there is violent conflict, education inequalities increase. And so failing to invest in education now is short-sighted. It risks holding back, not just this generation, but the next. Now, even though the challenges seem immense, there is a real renewed energy around the right to education, and rightly so. And I think me being here and talking about this is a real testament to that. National governments and the international community are responding. In Lebanon, UNICEF and partners have supported the government to develop a three-year-costed plan that's called reaching all children with education with the aim of providing education to Syrian refugees and supporting vulnerable host communities and strengthening the overstretched public education system. This includes creating 200,000 places to double-shifting, as well as various non-formal education options. Another example, in Iraq, UNICEF and partners put up a tented school with 11 classrooms, complete with furniture, sanitation, fencing, in the space of a week. This was really important because the families had been told they were gonna have to move. They were internally displaced families. They were being forced to move from one location to another, and they were hugely worried about the disruption that was going to cause to their children who had exams to take in less than a month. So we put up the temporary school and the students were ready to take their exams. In Jordan, we're sporting something called Makhani Spaces, which offer integrated informal education, protection, and youth services. And in Syria, the children like Sayah are struggling to get even into school with providing self-learning materials. But we're also working in countries like Romania, Greece, Slovenia, and Germany to support the provision of non-formal education, language, recreational activities. A resource database has been developed with teaching and learning materials. Online platforms have been created for facilitators and coordinators. And in many places, we're finding innovative solutions. E-learning in Sudan for remote regions where children have no chances of going to school. Something called Raspberry Pi, which is a hard computer with some software on it, which teaches children how to code and keep them learning. And there's an ambitious concept under development for blended learning, which includes accreditation and certification. This is one of the major issues, as I said, and if we can sort this out, it will be a game changer. UNICEF with DFID and UNHCR also launched something called the Humanitarian Education Accelerator. This aims to identify promising innovations, to measure results, to support evaluation, and where possible, accompany efforts to scale these innovations up to give every child a fair chance to learn. And this piece, for me, is particularly important because there's a lot of innovation out there, but it's very difficult sometimes to capture its results and support it to go to scale. But with all these efforts, there are still obstacles around this. Look at that, the camera. Finance. Education receives less than 2% of humanitarian aid. Financing is too late, short-term, and unpredictable. In 2015, humanitarian response plans identified nearly 40 million children and youth in need of education. Education appeals, targeted just 45% of those children in need, and only 12% were actually reached due to the lack of funding. In 2016, the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report notes that despite a 126% increase in requirements for education over an 11-year period, funding over the same period has increased by just 4%. Education is often not included in donor responses to emergencies, and of course there is insufficient overall financing for humanitarian situations which exacerbates this. But there's a push on the development side as well. Two-thirds of national education plans for countries that are affected by crisis do not include the needs of refugees and displaced people. And these plans are often the basis for development financing, like the Global Partnership for Education. So education falls neatly between the cracks, very neatly between the cracks of development and humanitarian aid, and it's something I can give many examples on between, for example, Ebola response in West Africa. But I need to be clear as well, it's not just about more money. It's also about longer-term and predictable funding. And to quote the Overseas Development Institute, who's done a lot of work recently with us on this, to put it bluntly, you cannot build an education system equipped to cope with a protracted crisis on the foundations of short-term and unpredictable appeals. And finance is still only part of the story. Increased planning, coordination, and capacity are critical. So, to the development of education cannot wait, a fund for education and emergencies. It has been driven by lessons learned from the no-loss generation, from South Sudan, from Lebanon, from the Ebola crisis. It's also been driven by the passion of champions, such as Gordon Brown, Tony Lake, Julia Gillard, or Brenda, to name just a few. People who are really committed to find solutions for education and emergencies in the protracted crisis. So, in 2015, at the Oslo Summit for Education, almost exactly a year ago, leaders called for a global effort to mobilize action and significant funding. But they also set in stage a number of principles to propose to guide this process. Notably, the need for strengthened efficiency, to incentivize and leverage improved responses, and for any funding to be additional to existing education resources. Not to fragment the education architecture or create layers of bureaucracy. So, definitely, their hearts were in the right place. And I think the question is whether we're able to deliver. The overseas development institute was contracted to undertake technical design work. It had a reference group that included representation from many key stakeholders, including affected countries. The International Network for Education and Emergencies, which some of you may be aware of, is a very significant network of practitioners around consultation exercise to get views of practitioners who are working in the field. And all of this was to answer this recurring question. Why are we failing to fund and deliver education as a priority in emergencies and protracted crisis? Now, the ODI research into the problem is extensive. You can find all the background papers on the Education Cannot Wait website and there's several hundred pages of them. So, in short, their analysis concludes that there are five overarching systemic gaps, low and uneven attention to education, poor coordination between different actors, insufficient funding, inadequate capacity to lead and deliver education and recovery responses, and a lack of real-time and up-to-date data and analysis. Now, those are the kind of headlines with a huge amount of analysis that goes behind those. I think the story was that despite the amazing efforts of many agencies and governments, the current aid architecture is essentially under-resourced, under-capacitated, and unable to support countries in fulfilling the right to education for millions of crisis-affected children, and that fixing the system required a little bit more than piecemeal reform because the problems are so systemic. But at the same time, of course, there is no desire to create additional layers of bureaucracy. So, it's about how do you leverage improvements within the existing system? So, the education cannot wait fund was designed to try to address these. Whilst generating and dispersing new funding is a central objective, it also aims to inspire political commitment, and we have several high-level people who are running around the world talking about it, so expect a call. It aims to inspire the political commitment, both nationally and internationally, and nationally is important because it's often policies of receiving governments that are critical in order to be able to move things forward. To support strength and joint planning and response across all the existing actors. To strengthen capacity and to improve accountability. And the fund is founded on a recognition that we can no longer separate humanitarian development and security needs. We need public and private partners to increase the efficiency of current approaches and leave rejudicial financing to catalyze new approaches to innovate in the delivery, the frontline delivery of education in emergencies and protracted crisis. It's important to note that it's designed to be complementary to the global partnership of education. In fact, the global partnership for education has played an instrumental role in its design with Julia Gillard, Gordon Brown, and Tony have been working together very closely. And the GPE Board have signaled their support that GPE may be the permanent host. UNICEF is an interim host and there will be a review after 12 months to agree a process, transparently to determine the permanent host. The fund will include two financing mechanisms that's one fund, two financing mechanisms. An acceleration facility, which will be about up to 5% of the total, which will provide catalytic support grants to global and regional efforts. For example, the education cluster, which has very few people, spread very thinly across a very large number of emergencies at the moment. A breakthrough fund, which will have the capacity and that will be about 95% of the total to provide immediate funding, but also multi-year funding and notionally earmarked funding for particular countries if needed. It was launched at the World Humanitarian Summit. It galvanized an initial commitment of 90 million US dollars from Dubai Cares, the EC, Norway, United Kingdom, US, and Netherlands. Plus, the Global Business Coalition announced the mobilization of 100 million dollars in financial and relevant in-kind contributions, which is probably one of the most significant announcements we've had from the private sector date. It's gonna be work to try to turn that into reality. A high-level steering group was established, including ministers and top-level administrators from donors, civil society, UN agencies, foundations, and the private sector. And in September, during the events that we've just been talking about in your leadership, the fund aims to agree some initial investments and will be seeking to announce further financial commitments to reach the first-year target of 153 million. Ambitious, innovative, audacious, risky? Yes, absolutely. Will it have teething problems? Yes. Even now, we're trying to make initial investments while designing fund mechanisms, manage every interest of donors and the potential recipients and the political advocates while simultaneously recruiting staff. Not all of the answers to all of the questions are yet known. It's a bit like building a bike whilst riding it. It's a very, very good use of that phrase. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't think we have a choice. Business as usual, even scaled-up business as usual, is not enough. Many of us here have advocated for education of children in emergencies for decades and we have played our part. But we have to do more and we have to do it better because the risks to the futures of 75 million children are too high. Thank you. School is a magical place, but here, for most of us, it is just a dream. Our parents can't afford to send us, so we stay home and help them. Many of us have run away from the fighting. We've lost our homes and schools. A lot of parents marry us early instead of sending us to school. School is often far away. The journey can be dangerous. Hey, come here. And when we get there, there are many of us. With just a few books, there are not enough teachers. And the teachers we have are not always great. There are no toilets. And if it rains, there are no classes and the rainy season is long. Only one in ten of us will finish primary school. And hardly any will be girls. Unicef and their friends are making sure that girls and boys can go to school. They're talking to everyone so they can see the value of educating every child. They are building schools, training teachers and giving us books. They are keeping us safe and teaching us the basics so we can have a better life. And build a peaceful nation. School really is a magical place.