I can jump in.
As you mentioned, there's been a huge number of children who have been out of school, over a billion. There remain hundreds of millions of children who are in and out of school, and that number keeps changing. I would say it's because of the pandemic, but also in conflict situations we have to think if there are other reasons, too. Violence against schools has been a huge issue in the past year. We've seen instances of schools under attack in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan right now, schools are closed because of the winter, so that compounds the issue because many families rely on schools to keep their children warm during the day, and they are struggling there. It's COVID compounded with conflict, compounded with natural disasters and other issues that are really forcing this learning crisis.
As I mentioned, I think what's going to need to happen, especially for these vulnerable groups, and we know who they are—they're girls, children with disabilities who were out of school at alarmingly high rates before the pandemic, refugees and internally displaced children—is they need really targeted supports because it's going to be harder than ever to get them back in school after the pandemic because many of them have already fallen victim to harmful practices. That can be anything from child marriage, which I spoke about at length, but it can also include child labour, trafficking, families that are too poor and their children go back to work. There are many things like that.
I think it's going to require a real concerted effort in talking to communities about what they need to support their vulnerable groups in terms of getting them back in school once it's safe to do so.