Ensuring every child has access to education is “the civil rights struggle of our time,” according to former United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

“This is the civil rights struggle of our time; every child should be given the opportunity to develop their potential and bridge the gap between what they are and what they have it in them to become,” Brown said.

To address this financing gap, the Education Commission is proposing the creation of an International Finance Facility for Education, which would bring together public and private donors and multilateral development banks to raise additional funds for education. Brown predicts that by 2020 the facility could mobilize an additional $13 billion annually for education for low and middle-income countries that have the largest numbers of out-of-school children, refugees, and displaced populations.

Brown stressed that the facility will work alongside and not replace existing education financing tools such as the Global Education Partnership, which works with low-income countries by providing grants and technical assistance to develop and implement effective education sector plans and help crowd-in additional funding. And the Education Cannot Wait fund, hosted by UNICEF, which is designed to pool and deploy education resources in crisis and emergency settings.

As next steps, the commission will be asking world leaders to endorse the IFFEd at the G20 meetings in July. It will also be conducting a workshop next month in Nairobi for pioneer country leaders to lay out a path to move forward with results-based education reforms, Kikwete said. Discussions with donor countries and development banks to form the financial structure that will underpin IFFEd are ongoing, Brown added.

Read the source article at Devex International Development