Richard Foord

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing this debate. Education is what we think of when we want to invest in the future. So much of what we discuss in Parliament is about conflict, aid and the present, but education is investment in the future. As we mark the United Nations International Day of Education tomorrow, I want to highlight the case study of Sudan. The United Nations has warned that over 19 million school-age children lack access to education in Sudan. To put that into context, we have about 14 million children in the UK, most of whom are receiving some sort of education and most of whom are in school. The 19 million who are not receiving education in Sudan makes this one of the worst education crises in the world. Schools there have been destroyed, teachers have fled and classrooms have become shelters for displaced families. According to UNICEF, 171 schools are now being used as emergency shelters. The conflict has also brought on the awful concept of the child soldier, and child recruitment into armed groups is rife. An entire generation is growing up without education. The war in Sudan, like many other global conflicts, will have some lasting consequences. These ongoing attacks, some of which are on children, persist, as warring factions violate one of the most basic principles of the law of armed conflict: protecting children. With schools often targeted or repurposed, learning is being disrupted not just for those who are child soldiers or involved as combatants, but for others. The loss of education will have profound, long-term repercussions for those individuals, including reduced incomes, poorer health outcomes and limited opportunities. For the society of Sudan as a whole, it will lead to cycles of poverty and instability in the future. According to the United Nations, the education crisis in Sudan is “the worst education crisis in the world”. When schools close, children become vulnerable to various risks, including exploitation, forced recruitment and abuse. The psychological toll leaves many children unable to resume their normal schooling, even when schools reopen. As of December 2024, over 14.8 million people have been displaced in Sudan—11.5 million of them internally displaced. This is the largest displacement crisis in the world, and over 53% of those displaced individuals are children. With school buildings converted into shelters, children have now gone 22 months without education. The educational facilities themselves have been attacked; they have been destroyed, looted or occupied. Children who once attended school every day are instead working in markets, polishing shoes and performing manual labour to survive. That forced separation from school, as well as from their fellow school pupils, is making it increasingly unlikely that they will return to school even when the conflict abates. The chance that these children who are exposed to violence go on later to perpetrate violence themselves is greater, and, even if they do not do that, they are more likely to underachieve or drop out. I will focus on the work of a small charity because I want there to be a note of optimism in this otherwise pessimistic window on what is going on in Sudan. Windle Trust International has operated in Sudan since 1999. It provides educational opportunities for refugees and internally displaced people. Before the current war, the organisation ran eight schools in Khartoum and two for Ethiopian refugees. It supported 426 refugees from Chad, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Yemen, Somalia and Syria, and partnered with 42 universities to offer higher education scholarships. It provided 558 university scholarships, supported more than 68,000 girls to stay in school, and trained nearly 9,500 teachers. The effect of the war on Windle Trust International is that it has had its offices in Khartoum looted, its staff scattered and its operational funding curtailed. This has caused the closure of programmes and the ending of staff contracts. None the less, it is still able to operate a presence in Blue Nile State, where a smaller field office supports Ethiopian refugees in a camp that hosts approximately 12,000 people, 58% of whom are of school age. Windle Trust International does receive some funding from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, but that is barely enough to cover two schools, teachers’ salaries, uniforms, education materials and training, so it is a pretty dire circumstance for a small NGO operating in-country. The Sudanese Government at federal and state levels can no longer adequately sustain their own education system. Teachers have gone unpaid for 22 months and reports indicate that 10,000 children have been recruited into armed groups. Education in conflict zones is their way out. Beyond imparting academic skills, schools can provide routine, security and hope. Where education is withheld, children suffer harm, lose future opportunities and lose the recovery prospects of their country as a whole. If Sudan fails to educate a generation of its children, its path towards development—and, ultimately, a growing economy—will become increasingly difficult. I want to close by thinking about financial support for organisations operating in country, and education that is provided through what was the Department for International Development and is now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. We have had a cut in the development budget in the UK from 0.7% to 0.5% in the last few years, and that is currently being exacerbated by the use of official development assistance funding. The UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact, or ICAI, has oversight of that funding, and it has pointed to how £4 billion of it is being spent on asylum hotels, for example, when it could go so much further if it were spent in country on such things as education. The purchasing power that we would have by spending overseas as opposed to in the UK would be so much greater. Other countries do not do things this way; Sweden limits its in-donor refugee costs to a maximum of 8% of its aid budget, and Austria and Luxembourg declare no asylum costs as official development assistance. This is a choice that the UK Government are making right now. In any comprehensive response to Sudan’s crisis, education must be prioritised as long-term development, not just the conflict aid we think of, such as food, shelter and healthcare. Small NGOs like Windle Trust International are doing their very best to facilitate that, but they could do so much more if the west—and the UK Government, for example—were to step up in support.