International Day of Education 2023: To invest in people, prioritize education

Building on the global momentum generated by the Transforming Education Summit, the International Day of Education 2023 will be a global platform to sustain political mobilization to advance SDG4. It will take forward national commitments and global initiatives, and step up public engagement in favour of education as the path to peace, sustainable development, and individual and collective well-being, while providing youth with a platform to present their initiatives and innovations to advance the right to education.

The event will also highlight one of the most challenging crises of our times, in Afghanistan where girls and women are deprived of their fundamental right to education. Since the political shift in Kabul in August 2021, access to education beyond primary level is indefinitely suspended for all Afghan girls above the age of 12. This means that 80% (2.5 million) of school-aged Afghan girls and young women are out of school, while nearly 30% of girls in Afghanistan have never entered primary education.

It will also include the launch of the first SDG4 benchmark publication by UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report and Institute for Statistics, which monitors country progress towards the benchmarks, including those discussed at the Transforming Education Summit.