NEW YORK – Starting in the late 1940s, an exceptional group of visionaries responded to the devastation of World War II by coming together to build new institutions for a new world. Looking back two decades later, former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson said it was like being “present at the creation.” He was not wrong. The international community had come to a new understanding that prosperity is indivisible and must be shared if it is to be sustained.

Something similar occurred earlier this century, when 191 United Nations member states agreed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), secured more than $100 billion in debt relief for developing countries, and established the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, as well as the International Finance Facility for Immunization. The IFFIm, for its part, is an innovative loan facility that has already raised more than $5 billion, helped to immunize 640 million children, and saved more than nine million lives.

Even more recently, the international community agreed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, and came together to address the most fundamental global threat by adopting the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Yet in a world undergoing rapid and far-reaching technological change, it is past time for education to have its own “moonshot moment.” In addition to ensuring that 260 million out-of-school children receive an education, we also need to start preparing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the social and economic impact of new technologies on the world’s poorest countries.

To be sure, the world has made progress toward ensuring quality universal education under SDG 4. Bilateral aid for education has increased for the first time in several years. Countries made unprecedented commitments to mobilize more domestic resources for education aid at the Global Partnership for Education Financing Conference earlier this year. The Education Cannot Wait initiative is rolling out more programs to address educational needs in crisis and emergency scenarios. And, all told, the share of humanitarian aid allotted for education is growing.

But, if anything, the challenge of delivering a quality education for all is greater today than it was when SDG 4 was adopted. There are now 75 million children caught up in conflict and humanitarian crises who need educational support, and the majority of them will continue to experience educational disruptions. Only one in four of the world’s child refugees will receive a secondary education, and just 1% will go on to higher education.

Moreover, current projections show that around 400 million children are not on track to complete their primary education, and that more than 800 million – half the world’s schoolchildren – will enter adulthood without any recognizable qualifications for the modern workforce.

The task of closing these gaps cannot fall on poor countries alone. Globally, $12 billion in education aid is paid out each year. But even if all low- and lower-middle-income countries doubled their spending on education and raised their performance to that of top-quartile countries, there would still be a multi-billion-dollar financing hole.

Hence, a major effort is now underway to reinforce and expand existing aid programs. The International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity – along with the World Bank and other multilateral lenders, an array of United Nations agencies, the Global Partnership for Education, and Education Cannot Wait – has proposed a plan to fill the external financing gap. The goal is to provide, by 2030, classroom seats to the 200 million children who need them.

The plan operates through a new finance facility, which will attract $2 billion in guarantees from donor countries and secure an additional $8 billion in loans from the multilateral development banks. This financing will be complemented by a $2 billion “buy down” fund, which will use the new grants from donors to offer financing on terms that developing countries can afford. For every dollar of additional aid money that is mobilized, the facility will unlock around four dollars in new resources for education.

There is already momentum behind this plan, given the support of the World Bank, the UN, and all the major regional development banks. The next stage is for donor countries to show a willingness to provide the aid guarantees that will underpin the finance facility.

This generation has an opportunity to realize the promise of a quality education for all, but we must marshal the funds needed to provide a classroom seat to every child. To that end, young people and charities have come together to mobilize support for a petition asking world leaders to take action.

We should no longer tolerate a world where only some young people are afforded the chance to realize their full potential. All people have a right to develop their talents, and their political leaders have a duty to ensure that nothing is standing in their way.

LONDON – It has long been known that the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos is plagued by overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, and rampant violence, including riots that have left many injured. But when aid workers reported in April that children as young as ten were attempting suicide, another tragic facet of the refugee crisis was highlighted: 30 million children around the world are currently displaced, many in appalling conditions. The crisis is not just putting them in danger today; it is threatening to destroy their futures.

In the Moria camp, children live in fear. Recent riots have displaced hundreds of camp residents and badly injured several. This is traumatizing for children who are with their families, but even more so for the many who are unaccompanied. Making matters worse, many children lack even basic shelter, with thousands of families crammed into cheap donated tents that often aren’t even waterproof. Last winter, three people died of carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to stay warm.

But the challenges these children face extend far beyond the short term. Even if refugee children eventually manage to get somewhere safe, their prospects are bleak, because most will never have a chance to go to school – a reality that will severely undermine their ability to find gainful employment.

At last count, there were 1,729 children in Moria, more than 1,000 of whom are of school age. The number recently increased as a huge surge in boat landings brought 834 new arrivals to the camp last week alone. None attends public school, and the Greek government has yet to allow them access to any of the formal education programs that were established for asylum seekers.

The best option available to Moria’s refugee children are cramped informal education centers, where high teacher turnover is a serious problem. Yet not even this option is available to all, as the existing centers can provide education to only 500 children per day – less than half the school-age population. And that number may be set to fall: the largest informal education center, run by UNICEF, is set to close in December, because the €30,000 ($34,900) per month needed to operate it cannot be found.

But there may be hope for refugees stuck in Moria. Greek officials have given the Ministry of Migration 30 days to improve conditions in the camp or close it down. The move is long overdue.

This is not to diminish the momentous challenge Greece faces. Already struggling under the weight of austerity, the country has had to cope with 1.1 million refugee arrivals since 2014, and hundreds more refugees continue to arrive on the shores of Lesbos every day. This has been devastating for the small island, whose tourist industry has been decimated. With the rest of the European Union effectively closed to refugees in Greece, camps on the mainland have filled up. But Moria is still operating at 3-4 times its official capacity.

The European Commission has allocated more than €1.5 billion to Greece since 2015 to manage the refugee crisis and says that additional emergency support is on offer. Where exactly past funds have gone is now the subject of searching questions by Sebastian Leape, a volunteer who spent recent weeks in the camp.

Inadequate support for refugees is not just a problem in Greece, with refugee camps in many countries having come under scrutiny for poor conditions. As United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi has acknowledged, this includes a dearth of educational opportunities. Fewer than half of school-age refugee children worldwide attend school; not even one in four make it to secondary school; and under 1% go on to pursue a higher education.

Countries where there are large populations of refugees need enough funding to enable them to give refugee children access to local schools. The Education Cannot Wait fund was established to close the education-financing gap for such children. Led by Yasmine Sherif, the fund coordinates with the UN and its humanitarian agencies, both financially and organizationally, to ensure that every refugee boy and girl has the opportunity to get an education.

Long-term educational and employment needs have historically been undervalued in humanitarian planning. But, as much as refugees need proper food, shelter, and health care today, they also need the knowledge and tools to build new lives and contribute to society tomorrow, whether in their home country or in a new one. It is in the best interest of all of us to ensure that they gain the skills they need.

WASHINGTON, DC – This week, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will release its annual Goalkeepers report card assessing progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Among the expected findings is a prediction that by 2050, nearly 90% of global poverty will be concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, and two-thirds of the world’s poorest people will live in just ten countries.

The ability to identify human-development hotspots – what we call “severely off-track countries” (SOTCs) – should, in theory, make it easier to apply solutions. Unfortunately, some aid agencies tend to avoid fragile states out of fear that their resources will be wasted. Currently, less than a quarter of OECD countries’ programmable aid is allocated to SOTCs.

But the perception that fragility presages failure is misplaced. With adequate planning, it is possible to implement projects that improve lives in even the riskiest places. Best of all, we know where to start: by investing more in human capital, and especially in education.

According to the Goalkeepers report, the number of children enrolled in primary school in Africa increased from 60 million in 2000 to some 250 million today, and the rate of growth was equal for boys and girls. But while more children are attending classes, school quality remains uneven. The challenge now is to ensure that all children, including those who are in school – at all grade levels – are learning the full breadth of skills they need to thrive.

To give young people the best chance of success, the two “bookends” to primary school – early childhood education and secondary education – must also be sturdy. Early childhood education prepares children for primary school by teaching cooperation, perseverance, self-control, and other essential skills. These formative years are critical for a child’s education, because, according to UNESCO, more than half of all children and adolescents worldwide never develop foundational competencies crucial to becoming life-long learners.

At the other end of the spectrum, secondary education helps adolescents prepare for the job market. To succeed at this level, students must achieve minimum proficiency in reading, math, and numerous non-cognitive skills. But even here, educational outcomes are disappointing. In low-income countries, nine out of ten young people lack basic secondary-education level proficiency across a suite of essential skills, ranging from literacy and critical thinking to mathematics, and problem solving. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, an estimated 200 million young people (about 90% of the primary and lower secondary-school population) are not able to read basic texts.

Development specialists know that a good education is transformative for students as well as families, communities, and countries. One study from 2008 found that the quality of a country’s education system – and the cognitive abilities of its graduates – positively influences economic growth. That fact alone should be enough to convince fragile states and their donors to invest in expanding access to quality education.

But there are other, more indirect benefits, especially for women and girls. For starters, better-educated women delay pregnancy and typically have smaller families. Development experts, demographers, and education advocates recognize that in many parts of the world, female empowerment is proportionate to family size. For example, our research has found that a woman with zero years of schooling will have, on average, 4-5 more children than a woman with at least 12 years of schooling. 

Increasing educational opportunities for girls would also benefit the planet. The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis has projected that if every girl in the world completed secondary education, fertility rates would drop and the global population growth would slow by as many as two billion people by 2045, and more than five billion by 2100. The deceleration would be even greater if the 214 million women worldwide who want to avoid pregnancy but cannot acquire contraception could access family-planning services. It is no coincidence that many of these women live in countries where fewer girls than boys attend school.

Taken together, schooling and family planning could translate into a 120-gigaton reduction in carbon dioxide emissions over the next three decades, as fewer people consumed fewer resources. It is no surprise that environmentalists like Paul Hawken believe that education – and educating girls in particular – is among the most effective steps the world can take to combat climate change.

The annual Goalkeepers report is a reminder issues like gender inequality, malnutrition, violence, and political instability will plague the world’s poorest people for decades to come. Among solutions, few are as effective as quality education. If fragile states and international donors directed more resources to strengthening education’s three pillars – early, primary, and secondary – the world’s SOTCs would finally have a chance to get back on track.

For human-development specialists, increasing women’s participation in the global economy is the key not only to gender equality, but also to overall income growth. When women work outside the home, they are less likely to marry young or suffer abuse, and women generally invest more in their family’s future than men do. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, fully empowering women would add some $12 trillion to global GDP by 2025. But despite decades of international effort,the world has so far failed to close the economic gender gap. We already have a roadmap for achieving full financial inclusion; the challenge is to follow it.

Economic empowerment means, at bottom, the ability to monetize one’s skills and talents. But for many women – and especially women in developing countries – access to the formal labor market is restricted by a host of cultural and political barriers. Faced with fewer traditional employment opportunities, many poor women have no choice but to go into business for themselves; to succeed, they need government support.

Agriculture is among the most ubiquitous forms of female entrepreneurship. But, although women produce most of the world’s food, they own less than 20% of the world’s farmland. Removing obstacles to land ownership could improve women’s economic and social prospects faster than almost any other policy option available.

Finally, for many women, the biggest obstacle to employment is also one of the least discussed: transportation. The World Bank estimates that 80% of women fear being harassed on public transportation, and in poor countries, safety concerns result in a 16.5% reduction in female participation in the labor market. In other words, economic empowerment means more than finding a job; it also means getting to it.

ZOMBA, MALAWI – When I was eight years old, a family friend told my father that he thought I was destined for leadership. My dad never let me forget that heady observation, and as a result of his constant encouragement, I took every opportunity I had to pursue our friend’s prophecy. Today, I owe much of my success to my late father, whose belief in me was unwavering.

Unfortunately, most African girls are not as lucky as I was. While many girls possess leadership qualities, social, political, and economic barriers stymie their potential. This is especially true for girls in rural parts of Africa, where poverty, abuse, and tradition conspire to limit opportunity.

The heartbreaking story of my childhood friend, Chrissie, is illustrative. Chrissie was the star student in the village in Malawi where I grew up. But she dropped out of secondary school because her family could not afford the $6 in monthly fees. Before Chrissie was 18, she was married with a child; she has never left the village where we were born.

Chrissie’s experience is repeated millions of times over in my country, across Africa, and around the world. Today, more than 130 million girls worldwide are out of school through no fault of their own. By the time many African girls turn ten, their fate is already determined. Some are victims of harmful cultural practices, like female genital mutilation and child marriage, while others are unable to escape the poverty that grips their families and communities.

Economic bias is especially damaging to girls. When resources are limited, poor families must choose which children to send to school, and in many regions, boys are viewed as “safer” investments. Girls, meanwhile, are married off, or sent to work in the fields or as domestic helpers. These decisions about the allocation of educational opportunity severely stunt female leadership potential.

One of the objectives of the Joyce Banda Foundation is to strengthen the financial independence of Malawian women, and thereby create the conditions for the development and emergence of young girls as future leaders. Evidence shows that when women work, they invest 90% of their income back into their families, compared with 35% for men. Furthermore, once women have their own sources of income, they are better able to participate in the political process.

Changing endemic cultural norms about gender and identity – and developing more female leaders – begins in the classroom. School-age girls must be taught to value themselves and one another, and that it is their right to be educated, healthy, and empowered. At the Joyce Banda Foundation School in Blantyre, Malawi, educators have adopted a curriculum based on four building blocks: universal values, global understanding, service to humanity, and excellence.

Parts of Africa are moving in the right direction. Today, nearly a quarter of Sub-Saharan Africa’s lawmakers are women, up from just 10% in 1997. Rwanda, meanwhile, has the highest percentage of female legislators in the world. And throughout Africa, women have been elected to leadership roles at all levels of government.

Still, much work remains. As the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will make clear in its annual Goalkeepers report later this month, governments must recommit to supporting female leaders’ development by investing in the health and education of women and girls. Delivering services to girls under ten years of age, especially in rural areas, is essential if Africa is ever to achieve lasting gender equality.

Over the course of my career in Malawi – first in civil society, then as a Member of Parliament, and finally, as president – I became convinced that the only way to change Africa’s misogynistic narrative is by helping more women reach the highest levels of power. Research from India shows that when governments increase the percentage of women in their ranks, social issues like health care, education, and food security receive higher priority. Having more women in leadership is thus good for everyone.

Leaders are born as well as made, but when they are born in Africa, they are not always recognized. To give more young women the opportunity to develop their talents and put their skills to work, today’s leaders must clear a path for the female leaders of tomorrow.

GENEVA – It was just a century ago that the Spanish flu epidemic spread across the world and killed tens of millions of people. Long before the moon landing, the Internet, or the discovery of the Higgs boson, the world was at the mercy of a disease that struck indiscriminately and did not respect national boundaries. The epidemic required an absolutely extraordinary response.

A hundred years on, contagious diseases continue to cross borders faster and more efficiently than people or goods. But other epidemics, of chronic and noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), are also a scourge to communities around the world. In fact, in terms of the scale of human suffering and the costs for society, these diseases can be even more devastating than their contagious counterparts.

At the United Nations General Assembly in New York, global heads of state are meeting on September 26-27 to highlight two major health threats. On the first day, they will discuss strategies to end tuberculosis (TB), an ancient bacterium that remains the world’s deadliest infectious disease. TB claims more than 4,000 lives per day, and is among the top ten causes of death globally. To make a bad situation worse, it is also a major cause of deaths linked to antimicrobial resistance, as well as the leading killer of people with HIV.

Then, on the second day, world leaders will convene to discuss plans to beat leading NCDs such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular and lung disease. Combined, NCDs are responsible for seven out of every ten deaths globally. All told, NCDs kill 41 million people every year, including 15 million people in the prime of their lives, aged 30-70. In addition to confronting TB and NCDs, world leaders will also discuss ways to promote mental health and wellbeing.

Developing countries bear the brunt of the TB and NCD epidemics, as most of the people suffering and dying prematurely from these diseases are in low- and middle-income countries. But while TB and NCDs are very different types of health threats, the best response to them is the same: We must build stronger health systems that are capable of delivering universal health coverage (UHC).

UHC makes health care accessible to everyone, no matter their circumstances. It delivers the full range of essential services, from prevention and treatment to palliative and rehabilitative to all people, not just those who can afford it.

The principles underlying UHC apply equally to protecting people against TB, NCDs, and promoting mental health. But while the urgent need for UHC is widely understood, real change will not happen without a greater commitment from the highest levels of government.

This means that presidents and prime ministers must become the champions of their people’s health. Only by ensuring a government-wide response can UHC be achieved, given that what drives good and bad health so often lies outside the remit of health ministries.

By highlighting the challenges posed by TB and NCDs, the UN is giving political leaders a unique chance to put the wellbeing of their citizens first. They should remember that promoting health pays dividends on many other fronts, too, from economic development to security.

So far, governments have already committed to achieving key global targets for TB and NCDs. With respect to TB, the world still needs to treat the 40 million people living with the disease, and provide preventive care to another 30 million, all by 2022. And to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we must end the epidemic by 2030. Countries can meet these targets by making investments geared specifically toward scaling up prevention, detection, treatment, and research.

As for NCDs, the SDGs commit governments to reduce premature deaths from these diseases by one-third. Progress toward this goal has not been fast enough to ensure that it is met before 2030.

Fortunately, there are low-cost ways for governments to meet these targets and save lives. Regulatory measures can protect people from exposure to the common causes of NCDs: tobacco, alcohol, physical inactivity, and foods and drinks high in trans-fats, salt, and sugar. Investments in health systems can improve disease detection and treatment for conditions like hypertension and diabetes. Vaccinating girls against the human papillomavirus (HPV), and screening women on a routine basis, can drastically reduce deaths from cervical cancer.

At meetings in Russia and Uruguay last year, health ministers from around the world committed to accelerating action against TB and NCDs. Now it is time to take the next step.

The UN General Assembly is a unique opportunity for world leaders to foster a true global good – better health for their citizens – by advancing universal coverage to end TB, beat NCDs, and promote better mental health.