Towards A World That No Longer Needs INEE

For a quarter of a century, INEE has shaped the global identity of Education in Emergencies. It has turned moral conviction into professional discipline, bringing together practitioners, policymakers, and advocates across continents who share the belief that education is a human right even amid chaos. The network has built standards, convened partnerships, and nurtured the collective intelligence that allows education to stand its ground when everything else falls apart. Yet as we look ahead, the world around INEE is changing faster than ever. Crises are compounding and protracted. Climate emergencies are predictable yet intensifying. Technology is transforming learning and response. Humanitarian systems themselves are being reimagined: from reactive assistance to anticipatory action, from top-down delivery to localization, from sectoral silos to systemic collaboration? (maybe!) 

 INEE’s next era must build on the strength of what it has already achieved, its technical excellence, its trusted standards, and its role as the moral and professional compass of Education in Emergencies. Yet, as the world changes, so must its leadership stance. INEE can evolve from a technical custodian into a transformative convener, one that continues to provide guidance and rigor, but also forges coherence across sectors, fosters foresight, and shapes the global imagination of what education in crisis can become. The future of education in emergencies lies in anticipatory and risk-informed systems. We can no longer wait for classrooms to collapse before acting. If we can model weather, track conflict, and forecast displacement, then we can plan for learning continuity before disruption hits. Anticipatory Action and Disaster Risk Reduction should no longer be peripheral initiatives; they must become integral to how ministries, communities, and partners plan for education. INEE can help connect the dots, building the evidence, dialogue, and alignment needed for governments and donors to finance preparedness as seriously as response. 

 World Vision is ready to stand with INEE in realizing this vision, not only as a partner in advocacy, but as a practitioner already laying its foundations in the field. Our programs across the Global South are showing what localization looks like when it moves from principle to practice: from community-led Unlock Literacy learning centers in Uganda, to anticipatory action planning led by the World Vision Lebanon team, to teacher networks sustained by World Vision Colombia that keep learning alive for displaced and conflict-affected children. These are not stories of resilience as endurance; they are stories of leadership, imagination, and shared ownership. INEE’s next 25 years must be shaped by these leaders, educators, youth, and ministries who live the daily complexity of crisis and response. Localization cannot remain a promise of participation; it must become a transfer of power, in governance, in funding, and in voice.

Equally, INEE’s convening power must drive integration across sectors. A child’s right to learn is inseparable from protection, nutrition, psychosocial support, and stability. Education cannot stand apart from climate adaptation, health, or peacebuilding; it binds them together. Integration means not simply aligning plans but designing systems that recognize learning as the connective tissue of community resilience. When a school reopens after an earthquake or conflict, it is more than a place of instruction: it is a sign that recovery is possible, that a community still believes in tomorrow.

Technology and artificial intelligence will inevitably shape this next chapter, and INEE has a critical role in ensuring that it does so ethically and inclusively. Predictive analytics can enhance early warning; AI can support teachers, personalize learning, and inform planning. But without ethical guardrails, these same tools can deepen inequities. INEE can help set the compass for responsible innovation, fostering collaboration between educators, caregivers, technologists, and communities to ensure that digital tools amplify human connection, rather than replace it. At its best, AI should become a force for equity: redistributing access, opportunity, and information to those historically left behind, rather than concentrating power and resources in the hands of the few.

And at the center of it all are young people, not just learners, but leaders. Across the Global South, youth are designing learning platforms, running community classrooms, and leading advocacy movements that demand both access and agency. They are reimagining education not as a service delivered to them, but as a system they can shape. INEE’s future must belong to them, to a generation that has grown up in crisis yet continues to create, to teach, to hope.

If INEE’s first 25 years built the architecture of a field, the next 25 must strengthen the foundations of a movement, one grounded in equity, preparedness, and imagination. INEE’s greatest strength has always been its ability to convene: to make the local visible to the global, and the global accountable to the local. That must remain its compass as the humanitarian and education sectors navigate a future defined by volatility and interdependence. One day, when every education system is crisis-ready, when every child continues learning through disaster or displacement, and when education is recognized not as recovery but as a foundation for peace and prosperity, we will know that INEE’s vision has been realized. Until then, it remains our collective promise, at World Vision and across the wider EiE community, that learning will never wait for stability, and that education will remain humanity’s most powerful act of resilience.

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