By Giwa SHILE
With the Group of Seven (G7) Summit approaching, aid organisations have repeated calls for the nations involved to invest at least 1.3 billion dollars to help children education.
The fund is meant to assist particularly girls to have better access to education. Around 3.7 million children could benefit from the funding over a three-year period, the groups said on Wednesday, in anticipation of Friday’s G7 summit in La Malbaie, Canada.
One of the groups appealing for the investment, Oxfam, called for gender-specific obstacles such as school fees, which prevents a large number of girls from attending school, to be addressed by the G7.
Canadian Prime Minister and host of this year’s summit, Justin Trudeau, has promised to promote significant financial commitments to education for women and girls, particularly those in crisis areas between 2018 and 2020 at the meeting.
However, Oxfam wants to ensure that the G7 provides additional funding for this commitment and that the nations would not only redeploy previously allocated funds.
In addition to the investment, children’s aid organisation World Vision alerted the G7 that wars and crisis situations present biggest barriers to education.
“The G7 leaders must work harder for peace and violence prevention,’’ said World Vision spokesperson Silvia Holten. “There must be an end to sabre-rattling and threatening gestures.’’
In addition to Canada, the G7 Group also includes the USA, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and Japan.
