Education for kids must be part of EU’s emergency aid

Help for schooling children and youngsters should be integrated into the EU’s emergency aid programmes, said Janina Ochojska MEP ahead of today's vote in the European Parliament’s Development Committee on the Report on the ‘New orientations for the EU’s humanitarian action’.

“Integrating training and school programmes into emergency programmes is important to prevent children from dropping out of school, especially in cases of long-running conflicts. We do not want more lost generations. Children stand to lose the most when they cannot develop their knowledge and skills”, said Ochojska, who negotiated the parliamentary Report on behalf of the EPP Group.

The document answers the European Commission’s plans for the EU’s humanitarian action and sets Parliament’s strategic priorities and policy recommendations for humanitarian aid ahead of the EU Humanitarian Forum, which will take place in January 2022.

Ochojska supports the European Commission’s proposals to reduce the administrative burden for the EU’s humanitarian partners. “Bureaucracy is a real problem, which wastes a lot of time and energy. Our suggestion is to enhance harmonisation and simplification of reporting requirements so that NGOs might focus more on helping rather than on paperwork”, Ochojska continued.

She also insists on the need to better coordinate the EU’s actions in the fields of development aid, humanitarian assistance and peace building.

“As we are discussing new approaches to humanitarian actions, we should focus on the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. Disasters caused by natural hazards and conflicts pose a major threat to sustainable development and peace. The impact of such disasters and the complexity of humanitarian crises are growing, as climate change results in more severe and frequent weather-related events. Crises are becoming increasingly recurring and protracted. Therefore, in many cases, we are unable to make a clear distinction between humanitarian and development needs”, explained Ochojska. “In our view, humanitarian and development aid should be delivered in parallel and be supported by peace-building activities”, she concluded.