The International Day to Protect Education from Attack

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today, I speak to you with a heavy heart, hearing the news coming from Morocco and Libya. Thousands of people lost in these calamities. It seems, sometimes, as though suffering never ends.

In April, for example, fighting erupted in Sudan. The ancient city of Khartoum ravaged by violence.

Her people caught in the crossfire. Khartoum is a city I have visited, in happier times. I remember a city of great beauty, situated on the confluence of the white and blue Niles. I remember a city full of generous, welcoming, educated people. I remember the campus of its oldest of many universities, the University of Khartoum. A campus that is now indefinitely closed, along with all the other universities in Sudan.

Earlier this year, students were forced to hide from fighting on that campus. At least one young man was killed. His body is buried there.

Ladies and gentlemen,

A university should be a cradle of learning. It should be a place of joy, a place where young people gather and discover their purpose. It should be a place where dreams are realized, not destroyed. A university should never be a tomb.

When I spoke a year ago, Ukraine was filling the news. The headlines screamed about this new war. Now, like all the other wars, it is a footnote. Like Yemen, like Syria, like Mali, like Ethiopia — forgotten by the media. Forgotten by those fortunate to live in places where bombs do not rain and where gun-wielding militia do not roam the streets.

Yemen, Syria, Ukraine, Sudan… When will this end? The answer is one we would rather not hear. It will not. We cannot delude ourselves that we will ever stop conflict. There will always be those with an interest in propagating war. Those for whom war and violence generate money and power. Some of these people are recognizable, we see their faces on our television screens. Others work in the shadows, unseen. Their work has bitter consequences.

Today, one quarter of the global population live in conflict-affected regions. Last year, 84 million people fled their homes. And more than half of the world’s refugee children do not attend school. What can we do?

Human beings have developed laws and doctrines, to tame our baser instincts and to reflect what we know to be right. To rein in cruelty and greed.

We must use these laws to bring criminals to account. And we must not forget the victims, those suffering in warzones or forced to become refugees. Many of them are children, children and young people. like Abdulrahman who we just heard. Many of them have never known stability. They have never known peace. These children and young people have a right to education.

I have heard it argued that learning is the least of their worries. Not so. Let me ask you a question. How many of you here are parents? Like me, didn’t you begin planning for your children’s education as soon as they were born? Or perhaps even sooner? What school would they go to? What dreams and ambitions, yours, and theirs, would be realized there? Would education lead to your child being a doctor, or a scientist, or a politician?

These options are not open to so many, their schools destroyed, their lives reduced to the bare bones of surviving.

Ladies and gentlemen,

 I come from a region that has known its fair share of conflict. Where we are aware of the deep and insidious purpose to attacks on education. Perpetrators know that without learning, society does not progress. They know that if children do not acquire the critical thinking necessary to ask questions, the status quo will continue. They know that if children have no access to quality education, they may well fall prey to those who would lead them into extremism. And the cycle of ignorance is perpetuated.

With quality education, would those children be the ones who discover a new drug to fight cancer? Who develop new technologies to combat climate change? Who expand their nations’ economies to conquer poverty? These battles, not those involving guns and bombs, are the battles worth fighting. These are the challenges we should teach children to overcome. These are the reasons we must prioritize the protection of education, now, and always.

We can break the cycle, we can find ways to educate the vulnerable. We can redesign education to make learning more accessible. We can use technology to bring accelerated learning to millions. And if we do so, those millions can achieve so much.

I call on the powerful tech companies, who tell us their products are transforming our world and our lives for the better. I call on you to help us. Offer real solutions.  Disrupt the cycle. So that every vulnerable child can be educated.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The young man killed on the campus of the University of Khartoum, a young man with his life ahead of him, a young man whose friends could not escape with his body, so they buried him along with his dreams. That young man’s name was Khaled Abdel Moneim. We will never know what he could have achieved.

My friends,

It’s time to ask ourselves, what can we who are here at the United Nation, what can we achieve?