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UNESCO's General Conference adopts new education strategy
The 31st session of UNESCO's
General Conference approved the Organization's new education
strategy and its programme and budget for 2002-2003. Delegates
unanimously agreed that the Education for All initiative
is the lynchpin of UNESCO's action, as highlighted during
the first meeting of the High-Level Group on EFA (see
below).
The delegates also reiterated
the need for placing education at the core of an agenda
for peace and stressed that learning is above all a means
for enabling people to live together in a world community
based on tolerance, democracy, non-violence and inter-cultural
dialogue.
"This has always been
at the heart of UNESCO's agenda, but the renewed urgency
created by dramatic world events, and the dangers and
fears that these in turn generated made our reflections
on the educational challenge ever more topical, ever more
relevant, " said Professor Michael Omolewa, Chairman
of the Education Commission, in his oral report to plenary
on the results of the Commission.
The General Conference
endorsed UNESCO's three main strategic objectives in education:
to promote education as a fundamental right, to work to
improve the quality of education, and to stimulate innovation
and the sharing of knowledge and best practices.
The General Conference
in Paris took place from 15 October to 3 November. Read
more
Education for All Task
Force under preparation
As stipulated in the Communiqué
of the recent High-Level Group meeting in Paris, UNESCO
is now working to set up a Task Force to operationalize
the Dakar Framework for Action. The main task of the Task
Force is to develop a strategy by March 2002, which will
identify major actions to be taken within specified time-lines;
general roles and responsibilities of partners; linkages
among activities, including a clear description of how
flagships are integrated into country-level activities;
and a consensus on the global initiative. UNESCO is currently
considering the composition of the Task Force, which will
be announced shortly.
The Communiqué is
available in English, French
and Spanish on UNESCO's
EFA Website where you will also find all documents
related to the first meeting of the High-Level Group.
First meeting on G-8 Task
Force on Education
The first meeting of the
G-8 Task Force on Education took place on 31 October at
UNESCO Paris. Senior officials of the eight countries
met to consider how these countries can accelerate their
support to the EFA process.
Recognizing that the September 11 events have sent education
further down the agenda, which will now be mostly about
security, terrorism and economic stimulus, the Task Force
agreed on three key areas for action: resources, policy
and capacity- building. The G-8 wishes to be part of the
ongoing global initiative and to help enhance the capacity
of existing agencies. There was no support for a global
fund for education.
The Task Force was set
up at the G-8 Summit in Genoa last July and will report
back to the next G-8 Summit in Kananaskis, Canada, from
26-28 June 2002. The next meetings of the Task Force will
take place in Rome later this week (30 November -1 December),
at the University for Peace in Costa Rica in January,
in Egypt in February and in Canada in April when the final
meeting will sign off the final report.
UNDP chief encourages
UN Resident Coordinators to be involved in EFA
Mark Malloch Brown, the
Administrator of UNDP, has in a letter to all United Nations
Resident Coordinators requested their continued support
to EFA. "I encourage you […] to continue to
give due emphasis on integrating education into national
development frameworks and poverty reduction strategies,"
he said in a letter of 12 October.
"The decision to downscale
UNDP's technical capacity at headquarters in education
cannot and should not be interpreted to mean that the
UN's work on education has diminished in importance. The
decision was taken to reduce overlap and to reply more
on the technical expertise of UNESCO and UNICEF,"
he continued.
Malloch Brown also stated
that the "failure to keep the EFA promise will impact
negatively on the change of reaching the other goals and
targets of the Millennium Declaration".
World Education Forum
in Porto Alegre, Brazil
The Porto Alegre World
Education Forum, 24-27 October, brought together more
than 15,000 representatives from grassroots organizations
worldwide. Participants adopted the Charter of the World
Education Forum stressing the ambition of developing educational,
political and technical projects based on democratic and
fraternal values. The
Charter is available from the Forum website
Development Committee:
EFA is one of the most powerful instruments in the fight
against poverty
Education for All was singled
out as one of the most powerful instruments for reducing
poverty and laying the basis for sustained growth in a
communiqué
adopted twenty-four Ministers of Finance or Development
at the 64th meeting of the Development Committee held
on 18 November in Ottawa, Canada.
The Development Committee
is a forum of the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund that advises the Boards of Governors of the Bank
and the Fund on critical development issues.
New regional website on
Education for All in Latin America and the Caribbean
UNESCO Santiago has launched
a new website devoted to EFA in Latin America and the
Caribbean. The inter-agency website features the
action of fifteen multilateral and bilateral development
partners working together to move forward education in
this region. The material is available on the site in
English and
Spanish
Available on the new
site are the final
reports of two recent meetings: the First Collective
Consultation of Civil Society in Latin America and the
Caribbean and the First Social Dialogue on Education for
All in Chile. Both reports are available in Spanish only
African Ministers of Education
discuss EFA action
A series of decisions to
move forward the EFA drive in Africa were taken during
a caucus of African Ministers of Education which took
place on 17 October during the 31st session of UNESCO's
General Conference.
Discussing next year's
meeting of education ministers in Africa (MINEDAF VIII),
thirty-two African Ministers of Education agreed on "Meeting
the Challenges of Education in Africa: From Commitment
to Action" as the main theme of the conference and
stressed the need for close co-operation with the African
Union (ex-OAU), EFA partners and other key development
partners in Africa. MINEDAF VIII will be held in Mauritius
in December 2002 and will coincide with the deadline for
finalizing national EFA plans of action.
The Ministers approved
the establishment of a Regional EFA Forum and the Minister
of Nigeria, Abraham Babalola Borishade, was elected chairman
for a two-year period.
A Nigerian proposal to create a forum to facilitate inter-regional
co-operation towards the achievement of EFA objectives
was also endorsed and UNESCO Dakar was asked to identify
'centres of excellence' which would be involved in the
forum and to establish networks to enable countries to
benefit from each other's experiences.
The caucus also decided
to establish a Forum of African Parliamentarians for Education.
National EFA co-ordinators
of East and South-East Asia to meet in December
The fourteen national EFA
co-ordinators of East and South-East Asia are invited
to attend a meeting from 10-12 December in Bangkok, Thailand,
to consider the status of national EFA action plans in
the subregion. Discussion will focus on the process of
developing the plan and will be crucial to identifing
the countries that need assistance and the countries that
have done well in certain areas such as girls' education.
For
more information
The
minutes of the recent meeting of the subregional
EFA Forum for East and South-East Asia (1 October).
Major consultation on EFA
in Finland
The Finnish National Commission for UNESCO, the Ministry
of Education, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the National
Board of Education co-organized a seminar on Education for
All on 11 October in Helsinki. The seminar gathered Members
of Parliament, education specialists, and representatives
of administration and civil society to discuss the challenges
of the EFA process from both a global and a national perspective.
Addresses were given by inter alia. Mr Harri Holkeri, President
of the 55th session of the United Nations General Assembly
and Ms Maija Rask, Minister of Education.
Contact:
Petra Packalen of the Finnish National Commission for
UNESCO
New publications
- Information
kit and brochure on EFA
A new
information kit and
brochure on EFA, published by UNESCO, take
stock of the major issues facing the EFA movement some
eighteen months after the World Education Forum in Dakar.
The information kit has been designed as an easy-to-use
and up-to-date source of quick reference for all those
involved in the EFA endeavour and the EFA brochure is
aimed at a more general public. The Information Kit and
the Brochure are available on the EFA website
Contact to
receive hard copies of either of the two documents.
- Final report of the
second Working Group meeting on EFA (10-12 September)
The
final report of the second Working Group meeting
on EFA (10-12 September) is now available
- Literacy and non-formal
education in the E-9 countries
A
new study by UNESCO assesses the gap between the
present literacy status and the effort required to reach
the Dakar goal of reducing illiteracy by 2015 in the nine
high-population countries (E-9) –Bangladesh, Brazil,
China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan
–where two-thirds of the world’s adult illiterates
live. The
study can be found on UNESCO's E-9 website
