United Nations published this video item, entitled “Moldova: ‘very generous in receiving refugee children’ – Director of ‘Education Cannot Wait'” – below is their description.
Following a country visit, the Director of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), Yasmine Sherif today (20 Apr) told journalists in New York that Moldova “is the poorest country in Europe” and refugees now account for nearly 4 percent of a total population of 2.6 million.
Yet, Sherif said, “the government and Moldova have shown an absolutely open-door policy, been very generous in receiving refugee children, and also to integrate them in the National School System, which already before the attack and the conflict in Ukraine was already stretched given the poverty of Moldova in general.”
She said, “there is also a challenge of tracking the refugee children because 90 percent of them live in host communities. And so far, only 1,800 children and youth have been officially registered and joined the public schools.”
The reason for this, Sherif said, is the difficulty for the government in tracking refugees, as “they were not prepared for this.”
She said, “Moldova never expected to be a host country for refugees fleeing in such a short span of time.”
The ECW official said the UN Refugee Agency “had one person in Moldova until the conflict broke out. Now they have escalated and increased it to 88 staff,” and added that “normally Moldova was not a high attention country for UN agencies or civil society. It was a peaceful, poor however country.”
Expanding on ECW’s $5 million Ukraine First Emergency Response grant announced in March, ECW announced a new, initial $1.5 million allocation to support the education in emergencies response for the Ukraine refugee crisis in Moldova while on mission with strategic partners USAID, FCDO / UKand Theirworld.
This new allocation brings ECW’s total Ukraine crisis education response to $6.5 million to date. The new grant will be delivered in partnership with the Government of Moldova to ensure refugee children and youth can access safe and protective learning opportunities. Investments will also benefit children in the host communities. The development of the grant will be facilitated through the coordination mechanism established for the education response.
During the high-level mission, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), announced an additional $18 million contribution to the ECW global trust fund to further support ECW education responses in crisis-impacted countries across the globe. This contribution makes the USA the third largest donor to ECW – the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises – after Germany and the UK.
With an estimated US$30 million funding gap for the emergency education response in Ukraine, ECW calls on donors and strategic partners to urgently provide additional funding to respond to the vast humanitarian crisis unfolding across the region.
According to recent reports, approximately 400,000 people have crossed the border into Moldova fleeing the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine since February. While the majority continued their journey towards other neighbouring countries and Western Europe, Moldova hosts today an estimated 100,000 refugees. These include about 50,000 refugee girls and boys, of whom only 1,800 are currently enrolled in school.
United Nations YouTube Channel
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