The risks to refugee education do not stop with COVID-19. Attacks on schools are a grim and growing reality. The report also elaborates on Africa’s Sahel region where violence has forced the closure of more than 2,500 schools affecting the education of 350,000 students.

The word “church” is used by the Government but not “masjid”, “temple” or “mandir”, much like the duplicitous exclusion of non-Christian organisations in many “inter-faith services”. Is this an expression of indifference, intolerance, non-recognition or contempt for non-Christian faiths by an Afro-Christian-led Government? In an ethnically-plural society like ours, “church” cannot be used as a generic term. It connotes exclusion and discrimination.

The number of Afghan civilians killed and injured in the conflict has failed to slow since the start of intra-Afghan peace talks, although the overall civilian casualty figure for the first nine months of 2020 dropped by around 30 percent compared to the same period in 2019.