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A report from the United Nations indicates that 67 million kids around the world are not attending school. A big portion of that number is the 28 million children that are prevented as a result of armed conflicts.

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Not only do many of these conflicts involve children being used as soldiers themselves (as in Congo, Myanmar, Chad and Sudan to name a few) but they are also diverting public funds from education to military spending.

Huffington Post reports:

UNESCO’s 2011 Global Monitoring Report concluded that the world is not on track to achieve the goal set by world leaders at a U.N. summit in 2000 “by a wide margin,” despite progress in many areas.

According to the report, overall aid to basic education has doubled since 2002 to US$4.7 billion, but falls far short of the $16 billion required to help low-income countries.

The report calls for tougher action against human rights violations to ensure all youngsters get a primary school education, an overhaul of global aid priorities, and greater attention to the ways education failures can increase the risk of conflict.

The U.N. education agency has set a goal of creating universal primary education by 2015, but if current trends continue, they are likely to fall far short of that target.

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