Last week, the following letter was addressed to the President. Today, he is hosting a Leader’s Summit on the Global Refugee Crisis Global Citizen. In the open letter,  partners called on President Obama to continue in his efforts to ensure that all refugees receive an education. Read the letter below:

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Dear President Obama,

As you know, last year 75 million children and adolescents around the globe had their education disrupted due to conflict and disaster. According to UNHCR, more than half of the 65 million people currently displaced globally are children under 18 years old. In these dire situations, education is a vital lifeline that must be prioritized and funded.

For this reason, and many others, we are pleased that you are convening the upcoming Leaders’ Summit on the Global Refugee Crisis to be held on September 20, 2016. The Summit objective “to increase the number of refugees worldwide in school by one million” has the potential to facilitate a major leap forward in 2016 for the most vulnerable children.

In order to do this however, the Leaders’ Summit must generate new commitments for out-of-school refugee children. We know that prior financial commitments to humanitarian emergencies made in the 2016 calendar year — for example those at the World Humanitarian Summit to the Education Cannot Wait Fund and recent European Union Commission funding to Turkey — may be counted for participation in the Summit. However, it is critical that the Summit commitment to get one million more refugee children into school is not duplicative. The scale of the refugee challenge demands that this political moment be another important opportunity to do more for the world’s out-of-school children.

The Syria Donor Pledging Conference held in London in February was the first of such opportunities this year and resulted in pledges to increase access to education for all Syrian refugee children, vulnerable children in host communities, and out-of-school children in Syria itself at a cost of $1.4 billion. Not only do we need to ensure funds pledged in London are now delivered, we must ensure that the target set for the Leaders’ Summit goes even further.

The Syria Pledging Conference was exclusively focused on Syrian refugees, who represent only one of the many dire refugee crises disrupting education prospects for children globally. Children in forgotten conflicts around the globe remain out of school and yet see no new funding. South Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, and the Central African Republic are just a few of the major conflicts receiving little attention. In the Lake Chad Basin, the ongoing conflict has forced 2.7 million children, women, and men to flee in what Stephen O’Brien, Head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs called “the most under reported, the most underfunded and the least addressed of the big crises we face.”

It is crucial that the Leaders’ Summit does not overlook these neglected children by double-counting other pledges made in 2016 rather than ensuring those commitments are delivered and more commitments are made.

We urge you and your Administration to ensure that an additional one million refugees gain access to education as a result of the Leaders’ Summit, and that previous pledges for refugee education are delivered and not double-counted.

Organizations that signed the letter:

Association for Childhood Education International
A World at School
Books for Africa
Edge Institute
Educate the Children International
Education International
Global Business Coalition for Education
Global Campaign for Education
Global Citizen
Global March
Human Rights Watch
International Rescue Committee
Islamic Relief
Jesuit Refugee Service USA
Libraries Without Borders
National Consumers League
National Education Association
Norwegian Refugee Council
Planet Aid
Plan International
Rukmini Foundation
Save the Children
The Child Labor Coalition
Theirworld
Women Thrive
World Education Foundation