New York: On Monday, the
United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the European Union (EU)
announced the launch of a new social media-driven public awareness campaign
aimed at reaching 20 million Europeans and highlighting the importance of
education for children affected by emergencies.
The #EmergencyLessons
campaign specifically targets people 25-years-old and younger in Greece,
Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia and the United Kingdom to inspire
them to raise their voices on behalf of millions of children and adolescents
whose education has been interrupted by emergencies, UNICEF said.
“Young people
understand better than anyone how important education is to their lives today
and to their futures,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. “Who knows
better than they that their tomorrows depend on what they learn today? Who,
better than today's youth, can demand that the world provides them with the
skills they will need to build a better world? Their future, and ours, depends
on it,” he added.
The campaign draws on
the real-life experiences of children living through emergencies in countries
such as Guinea, Iraq, Nepal and Ukraine. Throughout the next seven months,
their stories will be shared on social media through #EmergencyLessons.
UNICEF noted that a
number of celebrities are lending their support to the campaign, such as Samantha
Cristoforetti, Italian European Space Agency astronaut; Bostjan Nachbar,
Slovenian basketball player; Kriszta D. Toth, Hungarian news presenter and
media personality; and Jaro Bekr, Slovakian dancer.
Nearly one in four of
the world’s school-age children – 462 million – now live in 35 countries
affected by crises, including an estimated 75 million children who are in
desperate need of educational support, UNICEF stressed. Apart from missing out
on education, and the benefits it yields for them and for their societies,
out-of-school children are more vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and
recruitment by armed forces, the agency said.
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