About 60% of Children With No Education Due to COVID-19: UNDP

About 60 percent of the world's children have been left without education, due to the closure of schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report presented Wednesday by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). 

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According to the report titled, 'COVID-19 and Human Development: Assessing the crisis, envisioning the recovery',  the pandemic is throwing light over a new kind of inequality, reflected in those who have access to new technologies and those who don't.

Children being the most affected group.

"The COVID-19 pandemic is unleashing a human development crisis," the document reads. For the agency, one of the most concerning aspects is the fact that primary school-aged children without any access to the internet are not getting any sort of education, something that would bring the rates down to the levels of actual rates of the mid-1980s.

Only about 20 percent of the children in this level of education live in countries with very high rates of human development, unlike the 86 percent that live in areas with low indicators.

But when it comes to human development in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, education is not the only aspect that is affected. As pointed by the organization, health and living standards have been also severely stricken by the pandemic, foreseeing a global downturn for the first time, in human development terms.

“The world has seen many crises over the past 30 years, including the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09. However, explained that while each one of them has strongly affected human development levels, the world has been able to recover, year after year. But COVID-19 – with its triple hit to health, education, and income – may change this trend”, UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner warned.