Education a defense against economic crisis
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| Bangkok,
17 January 2000 (United Nations Information Services) -
The East Asian economic crisis has reminded the region of the
vital role of basic education plays as a defense against such
shocks in the future, top government leaders and experts told
an Asia-Pacific education review conference that opened here
today. |
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| The
Prime Minister of Thailand, H.E. Mr Chuan Leekpai, in opening
the 17 to 20 January Asia-Pacific Conference on Education for
All (EFA) 2000 Assessment at the United Nations Conference Centre
in ESCAP, said that his government was giving even more importance
to education after the recent economic troubles of his country. |
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| The
Prime Minister of Thailand, H.E. Mr. Chuan Leekpai will open
the 17 to 20 January 2000 Asia-Pacific Conference on EFA 2000
Assessment at the UN Conference Center (UNCC) in the ESCAP building. |
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| The
conference will review regional progress in the field of basic
education since the landmark World Conference on Education For
All, held in Jomtien, Thailand in March 1990. He cited the new
education law enacted by Thailand's Parliament some months ago
that entitles every Thai citizen to at least 12 years of basic
education. |
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| "Due
to the importance of our human resources, which is our country's
most valuable asset, my Government has been working hard to
… continue to develop and reform our education system," he told
the more than 400 participants from 41 Asia-Pacific nations
from Central Asia to the Pacific. |
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| The
Bangkok conference is one of six regional conferences taking
place around the world in the run up to the global review of
progress towards the Jomtien goals that will take place next
April in Dakar, Senegal. These conferences will adopt regional
action plans that will feed into the global framework for action
expected to be adopted by the World Education Forum in Dakar. |
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| The
EFA 2000 review for the Asia-Pacific is jointly organized by
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Population
Fund (UNFPA), the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB)
and the Economic and Social Commission for the Asia Pacific
(ESCAP). |
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| At
Jomtien, more than 150 nations pledged to not only make every
child complete an elementary education and halve the number
of illiterate adults in the world by the year 2000, but to equip
youth and adults with the knowledge and skills needed to better
the human security of the poorest. The EFA 2000 reviews in Africa,
the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America
and Europe and the Arab States have been preceded by two years
of data collection using a set of 18 indicators and a uniform
measurement procedure. |
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| The
goals of Jomtien require nations to pay as much attention to
quality as to quantity, which experts at the conference said
was a basic condition for raising living standards in the region.
They compared the fast growing economies of East Asia to low
income South Asia to illustrate the point. |
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| Mr
Adrianus Mooy, Executive Secretary of ESCAP reminded the meeting
that ''many challenges still remain'' despite the gains in EFA
in the region. ''The challenge of expanding access to quality
basic education to include marginalized social groups, such
as the poor, women and girls, and ethnic minorities, still continues
to elude us,'' he said. |
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| Kul
C. Gautam, Director of the UNICEF regional office in Bangkok
commented: "The examples of the more successful countries in
Southeast Asia - including Thailand - show that investment in
basic education greatly facilitated their rapid economic development.
By contrast, much of South Asia languishes in the vortex of
poverty due to inadequate investment and poor progress in basic
education." |
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| Mr
Gautam also cautioned against rising military expenditures in
the region since the Jomtien conference. ''But let me remind
us of this fact -- since the end of the Cold War, precisely
since the Jomtien Conference, military expenditures in the world
fell by 30 percent from some US one trillion dollars in 1990
to $700 billion in 1998. But during that same period, military
expenditures increased by 27 percent from $95 billion to $130
billion in Asia,'' he said. |
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| Ruth
Kagia, Director of Strategy and Operations, the World Bank in
Washington told the gathering that the East Asian economic crisis
was a "wake up call to the world that development is fragile
and that it can be undermined if all its key pillars are not
fully integrated." |
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| "Out
of this experience has emerged a fundamental rethinking of development
which includes the importance of protecting education and health
of the poor and vulnerable during a time of economic crisis,"
she pointed out. |
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| Mr
Victor Ordonez, the Director of UNESCO Principal Regional office
for Asia and the Pacific said that the nations of the region
and international donors would have to spend more and wisely
to protect and build on the gains in the Asia-Pacific since
Jomtien. |
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| The
"pluses and minuses" of post-Jomtien progress have seen the
region "outdistancing the rest of the world" in putting more
children in school and a dramatic surge in early childhood enrollment.
But not enough attention has been paid to retention measure
with an unacceptably large proportion of pupils failing to complete
the first five years of schooling, specially in the overpopulated
nations of South Asia. |
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| Pointing
to the "road ahead", Mr Ordonez said that "the house built at
Jomtien will collapse" unless it is firmly tethered on the three
pillars of management reform of the educational system, improved
information and increased financial support to basic education
from governments, international donors and communities. |
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| At
the same time new and better ways of delivering basic education
will have to be found. "More of the same is not our objective,
but to find new and better ways of doing the same thing," he
said. |
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| Mr
Sheldon Shaeffer, chief of education in UNICEF headquarters
and member of the EFA Global Technical Advisory Group, said
that the ''Jomtien goals stand the test of time'' and urged
international donors to meet existing targets for development
assistance, increase support for basic education, link debt
relief to anti-poverty strategies and develop greater coherence
across the education sector and cross-sectorally. |
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|
contact:
United Nations Information Services
Tel: 288 1868/66
Fax: 288 1052
E-mail: unisbkk.unescap@un.org
Press Room of the Asia-Pacific EFA 2000 Conference
Imperial Queen's Park Hotel, Sukhumvit, Bangkok
Tel: 2619000
E-mail: efa2000@unesco-proap.org
For further information on the conference please visit our
web sites:
http://www.education.unesco.org/efa
http://www.unescobkk.org
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