The Path to Potential

“We prepare our students for jobs and careers, but we don’t teach them to think as individuals about what kind of world they would create,” said Nobel Prize Laureate, Muhammed Yunus.
 
Over the last five years, the number of armed conflicts in the world has doubled, with children and young people bearing the brunt of the surge in excruciating suffering and dispossession. Climate change is causing more frequent and extreme weather events, with rapidly growing numbers of children and adolescents displaced by floods, cyclones and droughts. As a result, nearly 250 million school-aged children impacted by crises now require our support to access quality education. Who taught us to create this carnage? Maybe rephrase the question: who failed to teach us how to create the kind of world we need?
 
As we commemorate the International Day of Families today, the way we raise a child at home, by caretakers and in the school-system will determine whether children reach their full potential. Ultimately, they have the potential to either contribute to creating the world we want or instead fuel the carnage haunting us today. In the final analysis, it is always rooted in how we bring up and educate our children.
 
As Nelson Mandela said: “No one is born hating another human being because of the colour of their skin, background, or religion. People must learn to hate, and if we can learn to hate, we can be taught to love...”
 
Many UN, civil society and diplomatic colleagues have brought their children to family-duty stations where immense crises play out. Our children have seen first-hand the injustice and suffering children their own age experience in crises. One does not need to go that far afield – but we must be mindful of teaching our children empathy, tolerance, justice, humanity and the strength to conquer fears.
 
I fondly remember my favorite teacher and class at school: the subject was religion. No belief system was hammered into our heads. Nor did we exclusively focus on one religion. Instead, we were taught all the world religions and numerous branches to expand our tolerance and understanding of different cultures and belief systems.
 
The role of family, caretakers and teachers is just that: to unleash the child’s potential based on universal values, such as empathy for those in need, reverence for human life and the courage to speak truth to power.
 
Alas, there is no sign of human potential achieved when we leave almost a quarter of a billion children and adolescents in crises without a quality education. There is no human potential achieved in bombing schools, killing teachers, students and parents. And there is no potential achieved in making excuses for such destruction. These are signs of failure – not glimpses of potentials achieved.
 
When will we thread the path of potential for children and adolescents who carry the burden of these failures? Without education – no knowledge. And, without a quality education that entails values, empathy and courage – no potential reached.
 
We can realize the human potential for creating the world we want.
 
Assume that we all benefitted from an upbringing of empathy, universal values, tolerance and courage. Then we would instinctively seek to reach our potential by creating the world we want. Because the resources exist.
 
Yet funding for education in emergencies and protracted crises has dramatically declined in recent years. The UN-backed humanitarian education appeals that aimed to mobilize US$3.1 billion last year saw a decline from US$3.7 billion in 2023. Financial investment in education during protracted humanitarian crises has not been sufficient to make up the shortfall. According to UNESCO, there is a US$100 billion annual financing gap to achieve education targets in low- and lower-middle income countries between 2023 and 2030, falling far behind on Sustainable Development Goal 4.
 
Without universal pre-primary, primary and secondary education by 2030, we may soon have lost the potential of several generations, including our own potential. Today, the world invests more in wars than in humanitarian and development efforts, more in bombs than in schools, more in bullets than in teachers. Indeed, global military spending soared to US$2.7 trillion last year, while US$100 billion a year would already be enough to secure a quality education for all children impacted by crises. As a global community, unless we start investing now in the young generation – in their potential – we will leave behind a legacy of destruction and a life unlived.
 
As we embrace the UN80 Initiative, and stand firm in our mission to fulfill the goals of the UN Charter through multilateralism, we all must work together to finetune, restructure or change course to step onto our path of potential.

As we highlight in this month’s high-level interview with UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher: "We know that education stabilizes communities, protects children and plants the seeds of peace.”

That’s the potential. This should be our investment. This will determine the impact that we have: will it be destructive, will we remain just dreamers, or will we rise to our full potential as doers and build the world that we want?