DAWN Editorials - 27th January 2025

[faheemustad]

Learning losses

WHEN thermometers in Lahore hit 48°C last May, it led to closures across the region. From Dhaka to Manila, some 128m Asian students found themselves locked out of classrooms, victims of what Unicef calls an unprecedented convergence of climate and educational crises. The numbers, published in a new report, are troubling: globally, one in seven students saw their education disrupted by climate events. Most were in Asia. That should worry everyone. Education has long been the subcontinent’s favoured escape route from poverty. Now nature is blocking the exit. Three-quarters of affected learners live in low and lower-middle-income countries, where rickety school infrastructure struggles to serve mushrooming populations. When temperatures soar, these schools become literal hothouses, forcing authorities to choose between risking heatstroke and halting lessons.

The timing is particularly unfortunate. The post-Covid learning crisis, where two-thirds of children cannot read competently by age 10, is being compounded by these climate-induced interruptions. More worryingly, the disruption is driving an uptick in child marriages across South Asia, as desperate families seek economic relief during climate emergencies. April 2024 marked the peak of this educational exodus, with heatwaves affecting 118m children across Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, the Philippines, and Thailand. By September, when schools reopen, at least 18 countries had suspended classes. The pattern suggests climate disruptions are no longer seasonal inconveniences but structural challenges to education systems. Solving this requires more than air conditioning. Climate-resilient architecture, robust remote-learning systems and teacher training in climate education are essential. Yet education is absent from climate finance discussions. Fortunately, some countries are taking note: India has trained 121,000 educators in climate education, while Vietnam is exploring solar power for 50,000 schools across 63 provinces. The arithmetic is simple: Asia’s ‘demographic dividend’ assumes functioning schools. Without action to climate-proof classrooms, that dividend risks becoming a debt. For Asia’s education ministries, the heat is on.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2025


World Bank’s view

PAKISTAN is at a critical point. Inconsistent and poor economic policies of the past have had an adverse impact on living standards, businesses and the environment. Resistance from the ruling elite to reform has exacerbated the situation for ordinary citizens, with recurring crises hitting them harder than ever before. No wonder the country has fallen far behind its peers in recent years. The World Bank, which has committed $20bn in lending to Pakistan over the next 10 years to focus on development issues such as the impact of climate change and private sector growth, wants the government to implement wide-ranging economic reforms to rectify matters. During an exclusive conversation with Dawn last week, the bank’s vice president for South Asia Martin Raiser attributed many of Pakistan’s long-standing challenges to the country’s failure to carry out energy, water and revenue reforms over the past decades. In his view, it is crucial to implement reforms to address the myriad challenges the country faces in order to ensure improved economic development and prosperity for its citizens.

The World Bank is not the only creditor that consistently emphasises the urgent need to execute policy reforms to correct the deep-seated structural imbalances in the economy, which are impeding growth. Other multilateral agencies and bilateral creditors, too, have urged Islamabad to course correct. The reforms suggested by Mr Raiser — who was at the launch of the bank’s Country Partnership Framework under which $14bn have been committed in concessional loans and $6bn at higher rates — are not new or unique. He has basically argued in favour of major policy shifts to put the economy on the path to growth by improving public services and helping the poor through social protection programmes, improving fiscal management to reduce the burgeoning budget deficit and address distortions in economic, trade, energy and farm policies. Many countries, including Indonesia, India and Vietnam, have previously leveraged their economic crises to pursue reforms to achieve large private foreign investments and higher growth rates to substantially cut poverty and improve living standards. If they can do it, why can’t Pakistan? It is time our politicians and policymakers listened to the world and took the decision to jettison past patterns and move towards a new economic policy paradigm. Ambivalence is not likely to get us anywhere.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2025


Trumpian purge

IN his efforts to restore America’s supposed greatness, Donald Trump has launched a crackdown on migrants — mostly undocumented but also some with papers.

Soon after re-entering the White House a week ago, the US president signed a raft of executive orders designed to deliver on his campaign promises. These orders have included the rounding up of migrants signalling the start of what the White House press secretary has termed “the largest massive deportation operation in history”.

Moreover, a ‘Muslim ban-plus’ has been announced; it goes even further than the 2017 order, which prevented citizens from certain Muslim-majority countries from travelling to the US.


Foreign students in America who dare to speak up for Palestine also risk being put on a plane back home. Also, the US president has frozen the asylum and refugee programmes; at least 25,000 Afghans waiting to move to the US in Pakistan now find themselves in limbo.

For Mr Trump and his MAGA support base, these moves are necessary to preserve what they view as the American way of life. The fact is that the world over, the far right tends to blame foreigners and migrants for all of society’s ills.

And as history shows, such developments have occurred previously as well. For example, Chinese individuals were barred from entering the US under the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

For the atavist in Donald Trump, these are probably models worthy of emulation to restore America’s ‘greatness’. Yet it should be noted that Mr Trump himself has a close connection with migration. His wife Melania was born in Slovenia, which was then part of Yugoslavia, while his late ex-wife Ivana was born in communist Czechoslovakia.

If the directives President Trump is championing had been in effect then, both these women from socialist countries would have likely been kept out of the US. Clearly, the US leader does not have a problem with all migrants.


He once observed that America should admit more people from countries like Norway, and not Haiti and El Salvador. Perhaps the colour of one’s skin, and the religion one follows, are the key determinants qualifying one as a ‘good’ migrant in Mr Trump’s world.

Immigrants from around the world have made the US what it is today. Yet these realities matter little to the champions and supporters of Trumpism. Mr Trump’s moves are likely to fuel greater racism and xenophobia in the US, as all foreigners will be seen as standing in the way of America’s greatness.

The US is basically following Europe’s lead, where the far right has practically declared war on migrants. People from across the globe who seek to reach American shores must now accept the new reality: Mr Trump has pulled the welcome mat.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2025