US Senator Clinton Unveils Plan for Global Universal Education

...U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today announced a planned legislative effort designed to provide universal education to children around the world, saying the United States and other developed countries need to boost efforts to achieve the U.N. Millennium Development goal of having all children in school by 2015.

The move would make universal education in developing countries one of the top U.S. foreign assistance priorities, and is to include a commitment of $2.5 million by 2009.

"We recognize that no country can do this alone and we have to work together," Clinton said at a Council on Foreign Relations briefing. She added that she would be introducing the legislation "in coming weeks."

The meeting marked the release of a new council study, What Works in Girls' Education: Evidence and Policies from the Developing World, that spells out the benefits of educating all children, especially girls, and proposes the most effective ways of doing so.

Citing UNESCO figures for last year, the report estimates that about 104 million children between 6 and 11 ? including 60 million girls ? stay out of school each year.

According to 2002 World Bank figures, 150 million children drop out before completing primary school, and at least 100 million of those are girls.

Neglecting girls' education deprives the world of its far-reaching benefits, the report says. For one thing, girls' education is linked to income growth ? a single year of primary schooling for girls means a 10 to 20 percent increase in their wages as women, a figure that jumps to the 15 to 25 percent range for a year in secondary school.

Furthermore, an extra year in school reduces the chances of a woman's children dying in infancy by 5 to 10 percent. Education for girls also reduces the spread of HIV/AIDS, reduces fertility, and increases a country's annual per capita gross domestic product growth.

Girls have a "hunger to learn" Clinton said, recounting trips to classrooms around the world when her husband, Bill Clinton, was U.S. president.

She stressed, however, that developing countries need to make the first step toward universal education by increasing their efforts and investments, and funding under the plan, therefore, will be contingent upon the accountability and performance of a country's efforts to get all children in school. As Clinton explained, the legislation is aimed at "encouraging countries to make a commitment to universal education but being aware of girls' challenges."

Americans, on the other hand, also need to realize that educating all children ensures global safety, Clinton said, referring to the U.S.-led war on terrorism. A government's failure to educate its youth creates a void too easily filled by the flourishing of extremist groups, she said. The United States needs to support "education that opens the minds of boys and girls instead of subjecting them to either no education or a pseudo-education that closes their minds and focuses their energies on engaging in violence against the outside world."

Clinton's remarks comes on "Big Lobby" day, a part of UNESCO-sponsored Education for All Week, and during which children around the world are lobbying policy-makers to support universal education.