Giving Compass' Take:

• Zama Neff at Global Washington discusses 5 things we can all do to protect children's rights during this global pandemic. 

• Donors funding girls’ education, refugees, or school construction can use their leverage to protect their investments and the children they are meant to serve. 

• Read about the impact of the pandemic on children's health worldwide. 

“It does not make me happy that my children are no longer going to school,” the mother of two preschool-age children in North Kivu, a conflict-affected region in the Democratic Republic of Congo, told us. “Years don’t wait for them. They have already lost a lot. . . . What will become of our uneducated children?”

Children around the world face an unprecedented threat to their human rights. Pandemic-related school closures have affected 1.5 billion students, placing children at immediate risk of labor exploitation, hunger, recruitment into armed groups, and, especially for girls, child marriage, and sexual violence. Two decades of gains in reducing child labor and increasing school enrollment are under threat.

At Human Rights Watch we have been interviewing students, parents, and teachers in 55 countries about their experiences during the pandemic. A woman from Lagos, Nigeria, said that since schools closed, her three siblings, ages 11 to 14, work hawking fish: “None of them have been able to continue any type of educational activity.”

A teacher of recent immigrants in Texas said that many of her students could not participate in online learning because they were looking after younger siblings “or because other family members had hours decreased at work, the kids had to step in and work.”

“The fear for me regarding my children is that they will get lost and join the armed groups in the region,” said a parent of two secondary students, also in North Kivu.

Read the full article about children's rights during COVID-19 by Zama Neff at Global Washington.