Paris, August 28 {No.2000-73} - On the occasion of World Literacy Day, celebrated on September 8, UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura has issued the following message:

"Today, 8 September 2000, for the thirtieth successive year, the whole world is celebrating International Literacy Day. At the dawn of a new century, what conclusions can be drawn from the experience of several decades of mobilising efforts to promote literacy?

"The World Education Forum, held in Dakar last April, was aimed in part at making just such an appraisal. The most wide-ranging evaluation ever carried out in basic education has shown that, while significant progress has been achieved in some countries, illiteracy is still with us in the twenty-first century, in both the developing and the developed countries, despite the extension of primary schooling.

"Hundreds of millions of individuals - particularly women - do not have access to the basic right to education. There are also very many who, as a result of their deteriorating economic and social status, are losing their command of even the basic concepts they had acquired, and find themselves relapsing into functional illiteracy.

"Poverty and exclusion are chiefly to blame. They remind us that economic development does not necessarily ensure social development. "The combat waged by UNESCO is first and foremost that of education for all. Education is fragile and still too unequally distributed. Literacy is the gateway to education. To be useful and functional, literacy must be directly related with improving economic and social status.

"The Decade that the United Nations proposes to devote to literacy testifies to the fact that the combat to open that gateway to all will be long and drawn-out. Our efforts in the field of literacy are therefore not over, and probably never will be, for literacy, if it is to remain a useful tool, must be maintained throughout life.

"UNESCO places literacy at the top of its list of priorities. Only by enlisting the international community as a whole will we be able to meet the challenge. I wish to pay tribute, on this very special day, to all those who, day by day, devote themselves, often as volunteers and in particularly difficult conditions, to this noble and generous combat. UNESCO stands and will ever stand beside them."