With nearly two decades of field and global experience across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, Petra Heusser has long been committed to protecting the rights and futures of children affected by crisis. From her early work in refugee protection and child safeguarding to her leadership with UNICEF’s Global Child Protection Area of Responsibility, Petra has consistently championed the needs of those too often left behind. Since 2020, she has led the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies , steering a dynamic and growing alliance that now includes over 50 members. In this conversation, Petra shares her personal journey into the education sector, reflects on the challenges of stepping into a new field during a pandemic, and speaks candidly about why education in emergencies must be recognised not as charity, but as a systemic imperative. Far beyond tents and textbooks, she argues, it is about ensuring children can learn, thrive, and regain dignity, even amid conflict and displacement.
First of all, thank you very much, Petra, for your time, for being here, and for the interview. I think it would be great just to hear a bit from you how you entered the field of education and what you're doing right now.
I have always wanted to work in humanitarian affairs and refugee protection, which has been my driving force since entering this field. Early in my career, I spent many years doing protection work at the country level before focusing on child protection for several years. This experience provided me with many transferable skills for the education sector, especially through coordinating partnerships.
When this position opened up, it felt like a great fit. Being the Executive Director of the Geneva Global Hub for Education in Emergencies (“the EiE Hub”) was my first role focused solely on education, which meant a steep learning curve to understand the field - from its partners to its architecture - especially as I started during COVID.
While initially challenging, this experience has been a valuable way to enter the sector, allowing me to draw comparisons with other humanitarian fields where I have extensive experience.
Can you share a bit more about what you do at the Global Hub for Education in Emergencies, particularly for those who are not yet familiar with the EiE Hub?
We have now existed for just over four years, but in many ways still feel like a startup. It began with the idea to elevate education in emergencies, a sector long underprioritized and underfunded. Now, with significant funding cuts across many donor countries, humanitarian actors are forced to redefine priorities amid shrinking resources. As often happens, education is among the first sectors to be deprioritized. If education is no longer considered essential in humanitarian emergencies, we are failing millions of children and young people.
Beyond emergencies like armed conflict or disasters, countries increasingly face extreme climate events - both rapid onset, such as storms and floods, and slow onset, like desertification. The number of crises is overwhelming; the ICRC reports over 130 armed conflicts globally, not counting the climate crisis. This means all countries - not only those with long-term crises - must be prepared to protect education investments.
We want to raise awareness about this and inspire concrete actions. When you prepare, you also need to include education, because otherwise even more children will be out of school. We do a lot of high-level advocacy work with decision-makers in the UN, in governments, and other sectors such as climate actors. Much of our work focuses on breaking down silos and emphasising that education is not only in need of protection but is also a vital catalyst that helps communities withstand shocks with dignity. Since our founding, we have grown from 10 members to 59, including UN Member States, philanthropy, coordination bodies, and civil society.
Thanks for sharing and highlighting the importance of your work and the need for such a platform. Given that you're a platform to connect, coordinate, and do advocacy, I want to dig into your perspective on a major mainstream trend we see for the global education sector: the system change approach.
I was wondering whether that applies also to the humanitarian space, particularly education in emergencies, and what it means for you as a hub. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how you've approached system change, and maybe a little bit more what you refer to when you talk about system change.
System change and having a system lens is deeply ingrained in the humanitarian system. Recently, during a presentation, I was asked: "How does education in emergencies relate to primary education systems?" I responded that providing education in emergencies isn’t just about setting up tents as schools or handing out books. It’s about finding durable solutions that enable children to complete the full education they have a right to, even amid crises.
For example, there are nearly a million Sudanese refugees in Chad, which means about half a million children need access to education. Education isn’t something that happens in just three months; it’s at least a 12-year journey. Education in emergencies actors work to ensure these children face the least possible interruption and receive the best quality, safe, and inclusive education available. This is often misunderstood, so we’re working to communicate more clearly what education in emergencies’ actors actually do. In a nutshell, it’s about collaborating with everyone to ensure all children have access to safe education.
People sometimes ask me, "Is XY country a humanitarian or development context?" Take Colombia, where I worked in refugee protection, some regions have seen much economic growth and peace, while others still face high levels of violence and complex challenges. While the legal framework is important, what matters more is understanding who’s on the ground and their capacity to meet needs, rather than focusing on labels. Different legal frameworks apply to armed conflicts or other situations of violence, but the impact on children is often the same.
We must do everything necessary to ensure affected children receive education. Putting contexts into rigid categories often oversimplify complex realities.
Do you have any best practice that you could mention for the systems lens approach? I've heard about Uganda, where the government integrates all refugee children into its existing school system. This is often shown as a positive example.
Yes, absolutely. For example, in refugee education, the best cases are where governments have inclusive policies. In many Latin American countries, we’ve seen welcoming attitudes toward people displaced from Venezuela, allowing them access all types of services. In these situations, the international community plays a complementary role by supporting government efforts, given the scale of the needs.
But in cases where the government does not include non-nationals within its systems, it becomes necessary to find other ways so that all children can receive an education. This raises a critical question: how long can such alternative systems be maintained to ensure all children complete their education?
When I speak with colleagues working in Ukraine, Ethiopia or Burkina Faso, who support local partners and work tirelessly to strengthen systems and keep education going under extremely difficult conditions, these examples are deeply inspiring to me. I deeply admire these colleagues who live in difficult conditions and work with all partners to guarantee and protect education.
Thanks a lot. You mentioned very bluntly that EiE is not just setting up tents and giving out books, but thinking more systemically about how to ensure kids can learn. I've worked for the last 10 years on the evidence side of the education spectrum, understanding how we can measure that kids actually learn. It's not just bringing children affected by conflict into the education system, but making sure they also learn.
How do you see that delicate balance between getting as many kids as possible in the education system, but also ensuring they learn, and how can that be done in the humanitarian setting?
I’ve worked extensively across all continents, with rapid deployments to respond to emergencies worldwide, including crises in DR Congo, the Rohingya crisis, Haiti, and the Sahel region.
There's a quote from Dag Hammarskjöld, the second secretary-general of the United Nations, where he said the UN wasn't created to bring humanity to heaven, but to save it from hell. The reality is, unfortunately, that in many contexts, we don't even manage to save people from hell.
Of course, education must always aim to improve quality, ensuring children acquire foundational skills. However, in extremely challenging contexts, it takes time to support systems to transition from crisis conditions toward delivering quality learning. For example, in Uganda, the recommended teacher-pupil ratio is around 1:50. Yet, with a large refugee population, some classrooms have as many as 150 students - making it extremely difficult to provide quality education.
My husband is a teacher at a prestigious international school here in Geneva, and I witness firsthand the challenges he faces working with small groups of students, and how exhausting it can be. He also receives his salary reliably and on time. Given that, I can only imagine the immense demands on teachers managing 50, 100, or even 150 students in a single classroom - many of whom carry deep scars from their experiences. The money that goes into education in emergencies isn't big money. Sometimes it feels like little band-aids are put on things with very high demands.
I'm all for impact and measuring it, but we need to be realistic. What kind of situation is it that we’re looking at? Is it an acute emergency? Is it very unsafe? Or do you have a situation that's more stable, where systems exist and you can support skilled local actors in progressively improving the quality of education?
Thanks for sharing that. You mentioned you're a network and platform. What is the role of partnerships in making sure kids can go to school or learn in emergency situations?
At the EiE Hub Secretariat, we have just four and a half positions. We see ourselves as a small but important catalyst - a connector linking people, ideas, and efforts across organizations and sectors to strengthen the broader system.
Rather than simply coordinating, we foster collaboration and build trust among diverse actors. It’s more of an alliance, where each plays a different but complementary role: some are large funders, others work with military actors to protect schools, and some focus on system strengthening through long-term government engagement before, during, and after crises.
Creating understanding among our 59 members is key, since philanthropy, member states, and the UN all have different languages and mandates. When they better understand each other’s strengths, they become stronger together. That’s where we fit in, playing a small but intentional role to spark momentum and energy that actors carry forward, helping the entire alliance grow stronger.
Our members include major financial institutions and funds such as the World Bank, the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd), Education Cannot Wait (ECW), and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). The fact that organisations of this scale and influence choose to be part of the EiE Hub speaks to the value they see in working together across boundaries and the strength of the connections we’re able to foster.
Looking ahead three to five years, we all hope humanitarian crises reduce and the number of displaced people goes down so people can find stable places and a live in dignity. I'm curious to hear whether you've seen any new developments that bring you hope?
What gives me hope is the continued dedication of committed advocates – across local and international civil society, donors, and philanthropy - who are working tirelessly to deliver education in some of the world’s hardest-to-reach places. Additionally, the EiE Hub now has 59 members, including new additions like AI-for-Education.org, the Education Above All Foundation , and the UBS Optimus Foundation , reflecting a dynamic and growing community. It’s also exciting to see new organizations like the Foundation to support GPE and IFFEd establishing themselves in International Geneva, all bringing new solutions to the table, including in innovative financing.
Let's hope for the best.
Now, I’d like to turn more to you as a female leader in the sector. How would you describe your leadership style? You manage a small but mighty team, engaging with many different players. You've worked in different complex situations and now in Geneva with a variety of partnerships. What type of leadership style do you use? How has being a woman affected this and how you've evolved in your leadership?
I spent some time reflecting on this question after you reached out and mentioned it would be part of the interview. For me, being a woman in a leadership role has never felt like a defining factor, largely because in the systems I’ve worked in, there have always been many women leaders. For instance, many of my previous direct supervisors were women. I think it's more of a work culture question. Working in NGOs or the UN creates a very collaborative work culture: inclusive, intentional, with lots of empathy. That's what I’ve learned throughout my career, and it’s shaped the kind of leader I strive to be.
When building the team at the EiE Hub, I participated in a leadership training with the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs led by a psychologist. It offered valuable insight into different leadership cultures and styles, and the experience helped me appreciate diverse approaches and shaped my use of situational leadership.
In my experience, age has been a greater challenge than gender. I joined this role younger than most peers, and my title initially lacked clarity outside the humanitarian sector. As for leadership, many young people often ask me how to start an international career and develop their own leadership style. My advice: develop transferable skills, learn languages, and stay open to insights from other sectors and leaders, which can bring valuable perspectives.
That’s an interesting reflection. Thank you so much, dear Petra, for these insights. Maybe one closing remark, given the current dire situation in the international development sector, especially for the humanitarian sector, what gives you motivation? What makes you still wake up every morning and know you that want to do this job?
What keeps me motivated every morning is the commitment I see in people - like you - who truly care about child rights and human rights. No matter the sector or country, there are always individuals deeply dedicated to making a difference for children and who give their everything to bring about lasting change for those most left behind.
It’s the people I work with who inspire me daily, and that’s why I remain committed to this work.