"Education is crucial. I understand that, you understand that, people understand that but when it comes to world leaders' decision making, they completely ignore it, as if they have no knowledge and are completely ignorant," Yousafzai said
Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, urged world leaders to guarantee all refugee children access to a full 12-year education.
It is necessary to avoid a lost generation as the planet struggles with the largest number of displaced people since World War II, she said.
The issue of how to control over 21 million refugees tops the agenda at the 71st session of the UN General Assembly.
As more children than ever are spending their schooling years as refugees, education is crucial, said Yousafzai.
Initiatives taken by the 19 year old
- Yousfzai is also sending a report from the Malala fund detailing the size of problem and proposing a new framework enshrining the right to a secondary education
- The situation is especially dangerous for young women refugees who are less likely to receive secondary schooling than their male counterparts
- Regardless of the level of schooling, education for refugee children remains underfunded because refugee crises are still viewed as temporary arrangements
- To solve the situation, she is asking the international community to provide USD 2.9 billion by 2019 to the Education Cannot Wait Fund to support more than 25 million of the world's most vulnerable children, including refugees
View of the report's author
"We're not calling for secondary to the detriment of primary, we're calling for both. I think that one of the main things that has happened since the `51 Convention came into being is that the refugee situation has got much more protracted," said Philippa Lei, one of the report's authors.
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