NOBEL Peace Prize winners Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi have joined forces with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to plead for safe schools in three nations worst hit by Ebola.
NOBEL Peace Prize winners Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi have joined forces with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to plead for safe schools in three nations worst hit by Ebola.
The two children's champions have linked up with Mr Brown in his capacity as UN Special Education Envoy to make an urgent appeal on behalf of five million children pushed out of school in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone because of the Ebola epidemic.
The youngsters, who will collect their shared 2014 award in Oslo on Wednesday, are also to calling for round-the-world signatures for a new, already one-million-strong #UpForSchool petition to ensure every child is learning.
Many of the schools in the three African countries have been closed as a preventative measure to stop the spread of the epidemic. Other schools are being used to care for Ebola patients.
Gordon Brown said: "Too many - perhaps two and a half million of these five million children whose schools have been closed because of Ebola -may never return to school. The evidence is that some may be married off or forced into child labour and after a year out, half are lost to education for ever.
"On the eve of their Nobel Peace Prize award, two of our greatest-ever children's champions - Malala and Kailash - have today agreed to call on their supporters around the world to sign our Up For School petition, with a demand that nothing stand in the way of every child going to school.
"Already a million have signed up or pledged to with a simple but revolutionary call to the United Nations to deliver universal education by the end of 2015."
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