Norway grants Save the Children $2.3 million for education in conflict areas

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

AMSTERDAM-- The Norwegian government granted 15 million kroners (US $2.3 million) to international NGO Save the Children to help it implement a 2005-2009 education project in 25 countries around the world, four of them in Africa, an official of the charity said on Monday.

The chair of the International Save the Children Alliance 's Global Challenge Project, Tove Wang, told IRIN from Oslo that in Africa, the first phase of the project would be implemented in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Uganda, all adversely affected or recovering from armed conflict.

The project, which is yet to specify the budgets and needs for each country, would include the construction or rehabilitation of schools, teacher training facilities, provision of school materials, supplies and the enhancement of the quality of school curricula.

"We are not creating a parallel system," Wang said. "We are rather supporting the existing system in collaboration with national ministries of education."

She said the project would gradually expand to West Africa in early 2006.

"We want to bring a sense of normality in the minds of children living in war areas", Philip Crabtree of Save the Children-Norway, said from Oslo.

He said this would be an access-quality education project targeting eight million children in the 25 countries covered by the programme.

Northern Uganda has been ravaged by war since the 1980s, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to live in camps. A similar situation prevails in eastern Congo, a region now completing close to a decade of unrest.

In Sudan, with the Darfur crisis that came in addition to longer-running southern conflict, thousands of people have been living in camps for the internally displaced (IDPs) or for refugees inside and outside the country.

On its part, Angola is recovering from a two-decade war and still needs aid, especially in the education sector.

Wang said the project targeted children now in their villages and towns as well those in IDP and refugees camps.