FROM THE FIELD: Children in Lake Chad Basin attend school with help from UN-backed fund

Some 3.5 million children living in the Lake Chad Basin in Africa’s Sahel region do not have access to education according to the UN-backed Education Cannot Wait fund.

The children who are refugees from other countries, internally displaced by conflict and drought and those simply living in some of the poorest parts of the country have not been able to go to school.

The Lake Chad Basin, which includes Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria is one of the most deprived and dangerous regions of the world. Climate change and environmental degradation have exacerbated the challenges the region faces, while Boko Haram extremists have terrorized people across the four countries causing much of the displacement.

However, hundreds of thousands of children have been able to study thanks to Education Cannot Wait, a recently created global fund for education in crisis situations.

On World Children’s Day http://www.un.org/en/events/childrenday/ celebrated annually on 20 November read more about how more children are being given the opportunity to attend school.