Children who should be in school are now performing dangerous and often illegal jobs

Despite years of education and development advances in the last decade, the last six months, and the COVID pandemic has undone much of this progress.  Humanitarian Advisors is concerned about the large numbers of children on the streets instead of school in the wake of COVID-related restrictions.  Many parents living in developing countries, many of whom have lost their incomes because of COVID, and who cannot afford home tutoring, or computers for Zoom-based teaching, are sending their children into dangerous and sometimes illegal activities to raise sorely needed money for their family.

Families in these perilous conditions can rarely afford face masks, gloves, hand sanitizers, or other essential personal protective equipment. Searching through rubbish bins in search of recycling material that can be on sold for a tiny amount of money.  Many children only have one set of clothing, and shoes are often a luxury.  Not only are these children out of school, that are now exposed to even great health risks. Families are desperate and children provide another set of hands to search for meager income.

Whilst internet-based teaching is an option in many developed countries, its effectiveness is far from proven.  The best available option for children in developing countries may be radio-based education.  Many questions remain far from answered including how to measure and monitor children's participation in radio-based teaching.  Radio is of course a single direction device and rarely is that ideal of teaching.

UNICEF has estimated that 1.6 billion children were forced home during COVID restrictions that spread across 192 countries.  Today, there are still 872 million children in 51 countries still unable to return to traditional class-based education.  There are at least 463 million children have no remote learning structures in place.  It is these children that are most likely to be forced onto the streets to work.  COVID is similar in many ways to other humanitarian challenges we have faced before and we know that closing schools because of war, natural disaster, or a pandemic, has a lasting and devastating impact on children.  Disrupted education leaves children more at risk of child labour, sexual abuse, and diminishes the ability of growing children to break the cycle of poverty.  The longer that children are out of school, the less likely it is that they will return. Re-opening of schools - when safe - must be prioritised.  The impact of COVID has been far and wide, and it is important that we do not become accustomed to these COVID-related disturbances.