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Immediately following the first all-women UN mission to Afghanistan since takeover by the de facto authorities, Yasmine Sherif, Director of Education Cannot Wait – the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises – appealed to donors to significantly increase financial support for a robust collective humanitarian-development nexus response.

For decades, armed conflict, political repression and targeted campaigns against minorities have forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave the country. Now many more are expected to follow.

As G20 Member States prepare to meet to agree on a common international strategy in response to the crisis in Afghanistan, they must ensure that the strategy includes a plan to uphold every child’s right to quality education.

Soldiers and police have been deployed across schools in Eswatini where, for weeks now, students have been protesting to demand political reforms, according to pro-democracy groups. School students in Africa’s last absolute monarchy, formerly known as Swaziland, have been boycotting classes and staging low-key protests for the past month.

While stressing that the goal across countries is to promote safer, in-person learning and child care, WHO suggested that decisions on full or partial closure or reopening should be taken at the local administrative level, guided by local levels of transmission of virus and the extent to which reopening of schools may enhance transmission in the community

A year and a half since the COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented global school closures, many students have been able to resume in-class learning, but millions have yet to return to the classroom. Schools are now fully open in 117 countries with a combined learner population of 539 million ranging from pre-primary to secondary levels.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has said preventing women from accessing education in neighbouring Afghanistan would be un-Islamic.

The United Nations drummed up more than $1.2 billion in emergency pledges Monday for helping 11 million Afghans facing an escalating humanitarian crisis in their homeland and millions more elsewhere in the region as the U.N. human rights chief voiced concerns about the Taliban’s first steps in establishing power in the beleaguered and impoverished country.

The international community pledged more than $1 billion in emergency funding as Afghans already unsure of where their next meal will come from risk running out of food just as winter sets in.

Malala Yousafzai's speech to the UN Security Council regarding the situation in Afghanistan.