“Human beings [have never] had such access to innovation, creativity, and opportunity,” said Dickon Mitchell, Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Physical Development, Public Utilities, Civil Aviation and Transportation, and Minister for National Security, Home Affairs, Public Administration, Information and Disaster Management of Grenada, speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).  “In one corner of the world, classrooms are reduced to rubble. In another, laboratories create breakthroughs in science and technology that can transform our future,” he observed.  Education - “the single greatest social, economic and creative equaliser we possess” which “transforms circumstance into possibility” - is not a narrow path to employment, but a broad road to resilience, innovation, and peace.

“For me, education was a bridge from limitation to possibility,” he said, noting that his story is “echoed in the resilience of Caribbean families” who sacrifice for their children’s schooling - a story of people who have learned to adapt, innovate, and persist.  For its part, Grenada has embarked on transformative reforms to strengthen its education system and expand opportunities for students at all levels, including by making education more affordable and inclusive.  Also, through the Caribbean Future Skills Fund - conceived with Guyana - Grenada is pioneering an endowment model for education: where international contributions are matched by local investment.  “When Grenada, Jamaica, or Dominica rebuilds a school after a hurricane, we are not just rebuilding classrooms; we are rebuilding futures,” he stated.

Amid raging wars, children bear the heaviest burden:  “When a school is reduced to rubble, when a teacher is silenced, when a family is forced to flee in fear, education becomes the first casualty of conflict.”  And when education is taken away, “it is not only opportunity that dies but hope itself”, he said, emphasizing that “a child deprived of learning today becomes an adult deprived of dignity tomorrow; and a society deprived of educated citizens becomes a society deprived of peace.”  Whether that child is in Palestine, Haiti, Sudan, or Ukraine, their right to learn is as sacred as the right to life itself, he asserted, urging the Assembly to come to the table in a shared realization that “no child’s classroom should be traded for a battlefield”, and “no young mind should be collateral damage of political disputes”.

He underscored that, if every child in low-income countries left school with basic reading skills, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty.  If all girls completed secondary school, child marriage would fall by two-thirds, and maternal deaths would drop by almost half. Indeed, education shapes economies, democracies and peace itself.  He called for equipping the next generation with the wisdom to discern, the courage to question and the empathy to choose what is right.  “Let us protect classrooms as fiercely as we protect borders. “Let us value teachers as highly as we value treaties.  Let us treat education not as a privilege for the few, but as a right for all.”