The Future of Education for Children Affected by Conflict, Emergencies and Displacement
If we can't get to the fundamentals of safety and care, learning will not happen.
— Reyna Montoya, Founder & CEO, Aliento
What does it take to create education systems that truly serve children in times of crisis? Can the global community shift from a model of centralised programming to sustained support for local leadership and agency?
Today, the scale of crisis facing children is unprecedented. According to UNICEF, 234 million school-aged children live in crisis settings that require urgent support to access education. UNICEF also estimates that close to 50 million children have been displaced by conflict and violence, with refugee children five times more likely to be out of school than their peers. Girls in conflict-affected countries are also 2.5 times more likely to be out of school. These figures make clear that education in emergencies is not an optional add-on or a temporary intervention. It is fundamental to ensuring children’s safety, well-being, dignity and future. These questions opened a roundtable convened by Teach For All for a group of leaders from across the Education in Emergencies sector from countries including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, India, Niger, and Ukraine. Participants spoke from the lived reality of a system operating on flawed premises, one that continues to perpetuate dependency and exclusion.
The current reality, they argued, is defined by donor-centric, top-down approaches that are often disconnected from local needs and can inadvertently cause harm. Interventions are reactive, treating crises as exceptions rather than building national systems with the inherent capacity to respond. Language, like “scale” and “beneficiary,” was called into question for reinforcing harmful power dynamics.
Current systems are unequal, fragile and slow to respond to crisis
Global efforts in this sector continue to be unequal and ineffective with power and decision-making far from where crises occur, and rarely including the local leaders working most closely with children and communities. Relief efforts are characterised by external control and short-termism, and governed by a donor-centric mindset that prioritizes efficiency and measurement over what is best for the child.
Bureaucratic hurdles, including compliance processes, are not neutral and can function as exclusionary mechanisms that prevent local actors from having a meaningful seat at the table. Project-to-project cycles prevent long-term thinking, with funders expecting rapid results despite the time required for system-level change.
This results in parallel structures that do not strengthen national systems. At the same time, the normalization of crisis risks desensitization, while education can be used to impose external values. A dominant focus on foundational learning, particularly reading, writing, and mathematics, often comes at the expense of broader aspects of child development.
Future systems must be designed for ongoing resilience to crisis
In contrast, a future system would be rooted in local ownership and resilience. It would reject charity-based models and deficit thinking, recognizing that no one is waiting to be saved, and instead build on community ingenuity, mutual aid, and local leadership. Power and decision-making would move closer to where crises occur, with local leaders and displaced youth included from the beginning and throughout.
Education in emergencies would be integrated into national systems and domestic financing, rather than treated as a parallel track, and would prioritize safety, care, and holistic development, including social and emotional learning, emotional resilience, and play alongside academic learning.
Sustained support for local leadership is needed to enable this shift
In order to effect the shift in our efforts to create the resilient and responsive systems that children in emergencies around the world need, the group suggested we need to:
- Reframe education in emergencies from urgent makeshift interventions to sustained investments in decolonization, local leadership, and local ownership. This includes recognizing education in crisis not as charity, but as a necessity for human dignity and survival. As Munia Mozummder, CEO of Teach For Bangladesh stated, “Education in crisis is not charity — it is survival.” It also means centering the child’s holistic needs, including safety, care, and positive childhood experiences.
- Moving away from donor-centric control toward systems where communities and local actors are agents of change. This includes recognizing collective action across the ecosystem and ensuring decision-making reflects the reality that communities themselves often outspend donors
- Replacing externally designed solutions with deep listening, humility, and openness to community knowledge. Systems must embed resilience and learn from experience so they strengthen over time, even in contexts of repeated crises.
- Integrating education in emergencies into national systems and domestic financing, rather than maintaining parallel tracks. Delivery must be guided by proximity to communities and grounded in relevance, ownership, and long-term commitment.
It requires a shift in mindsets and a new ethos of cooperation
Barriers include charity-based mindsets, a lack of humility, extractive bureaucracies, and a culture of scarcity that limits local participation. Global institutions often reinforce existing power, resisting efforts to redistribute authority.
Enablers include cross-sector coalitions, civil society networks, and local educators sustaining systems during crises. Political will, proximity, and community-led solutions ensure relevance, trust, and ownership. Building collective capacity remains key: practicing courageous allyship, amplifying new narratives, strengthening collaboration, and embedding empathy and proximity as core principles.
How Teach For Niger is integrating Education in EmergenciesA major challenge in EiE is the “parallel humanitarian track,” temporary externally-run programs that operate alongside national systems without strengthening them. Teach For Niger, led by Nouredine Abdoulaye, exemplifies a shift toward systemic integration and local ownership. This approach rejects top-down design and builds a system rooted in the community. Key actions include recruiting local educators, co-designing training with community members, and developing anticipatory action plans for shared crisis response. As a result, Teach For Niger now co-leads the country’s Safe School Group, a role usually held by international actors, showing how EiE can move from temporary aid to lasting, resilient systems owned locally.
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To start we must act imperfectly and commit collectively
The roundtable highlighted that EiE systems cannot be merely reformed but must be dismantled. As Christopher Henderson, Education in Emergencies Specialist, UNICEF Geneva Graduate Institute, reflected, “We are part of the lever of change, to have these conversations and continue challenging these organizations…to be brave, and to give up some of this power.” Leaders stressed building movement infrastructure that ensures displaced youth have real power and creating mechanisms to hold entrenched authority accountable. Janhvi M Kanoria, Innovation Development Executive Director, Education Above All, urged designing “the new narrative for EiE” to break the cycle of short-term, donor-driven funding, while Ashish Shrivastava, co-founder, Shiksharth, emphasized educating donors on “financing for permanence not relief.”
Participants committed to action: hardwiring EiE into national systems, centering youth leadership, uniting civil society to challenge power, and amplifying local narratives through new platforms. Together, these efforts chart a path toward systemic, locally led, and sustainable change.
