The climate crisis is a crisis of education. Right here, right now, climate change is robbing millions of children and teenagers of their right to learn, their right to play and their right to feel safe. Deadly floods in Pakistan destroyed or damaged more than 26,000 schools last year. This has put more than 600,000 adolescent girls at higher risk of dropping out of school, gender-based violence and child marriage. In Ethiopia, girls like Mellion are starving and at risk of dropping out of school forever due to the ongoing drought.

While the climate crisis threatens the rights of every person on the planet, those bearing its brunt are the most vulnerable girls and boys who already live in protracted crisis environments due to armed conflict, forced displacement and other crises. For them and their communities, climate change is already a daunting reality that can mean the difference between life and death, between war and peace, between being able to learn or not.

Today, there are more than 224 million children affected by crisis around the world who urgently need support in education. New analysis from Education Cannot Wait (ECW), UNICEF's global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, found that 62 million of these children have been affected by climate risks such as droughts, floods, cyclones and other extreme weather. events from 2020. This is close to the total population of several G7 countries such as the UK, France or Italy. (From The Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown and Yasmine Sherif, The Rt. the Honorable Gordon Brown is the UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Chair of the High Level Steering Group on Education cannot wait. Yasmine Sherif is the executive director of Education Cannot Wait, a global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.)