| |
| Focus... |
| |
Kofi
Annan Launches New Initiative
for Girls Education
Dakar Sends Strong Message of Hope |
| |
The opening session of the World Education Forum began Wednesday
in Dakar, on an inspiring note with UN secretary General, Mr.
Kofi Annan's launch of a new United Nations global initiative
to educate girls. |
| |
| Mr.
Annan, who delivered the keynote address at the opening session,
said although some achievements, have been made with the dramatic
rise in education levels in many developing countries, there
is need for governments and their education partners to accelerate
their efforts to fulfil the promise they made of reaching the
Education for All (EFA) target which have largely not been met.. |
| |
| "This
conference is a test for all of us who call ourselves the international
community,'' said Annan. ''Ten years ago, in Jomtien, we set
ourselves the goal of basic education for all, we are still
far from achieving it. |
| |
| United
Nations figures indicate that more than 880 million adults are
illiterate while a quarter of a million children are out of
school globally. |
| |
| "These
millions of children are not only being denied something many
of us take for granted, they are being denied a fundamental
human right spelt out in the international instruments their
governments have signed on to, such as the declaration of human
rights and the Convention on the Rights of the child.'' |
| |
| ''What
is more, the communities where these children live are not only
being denied a future labour force of healthy, literate and
employable citizens, they are being denied the foundations of
development and a future place in the global economy. They are
in fact being denied the future itself.'' |
| |
| Mr.
Annan pointed out that there is still a "Yawning digital divide"
between those who have access to new learning opportunities
brought by the explosive technological innovations and those
who have not. |
| |
|
For girls who account for two-thirds of children who are out
of school, he said, the denial of human rights is twice over.
"From issues of morality to issues of mortality, the denial
of girls' rights begins in early childhood. When a choice has
to be made between educating a boy or a girl, girls are more
likely to be kept at home," he said. |
| |
| "When
family income needs to be supplemented, girls are more likely
to be sent to work. Even if girls do go to school, they will
often have to do housework at the expense of homework.'' |
| |
| To
address the imbalance, Annan said the UN system has set up a
new initiative aimed at promoting the education of girls and
bridging the gender gap in schools by 2005. "We need all those
with the power to change things to come together in a global
alliance for girls,'' he said. |
| |
| The
initiative is also aimed at ensuring that all children, both
boys and girls are able to complete their primary education
by 2015. |
| |
 |
| |
| Plenary |
| |
| President
Abdoulaye Wade |
| |
| Calls
for More Concrete Action |
| |
| President
Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal opened the World Education Forum on
Wednesday at the plush Meridien President hotel in Dakar, in
the presence of UN Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan and several
heads of international institutions active in the field of education.
|
| |
| In
a rather frank speech lacking the usual diplomatic niceties
common and such meetings, Wade, who was elected president on
19 March, criticised the donors' interventions in Africa saying
they have not produced many good results. |
| |
| "Their
interventions are characterised by tremendous waste and delays
that preclude quick and positive results." "Foreign aid to Africa
also suffers from the huge amounts of money devoted to numerous
studies whose conclusions often end up gathering dust" in various
archives. |
| |
| Wade
cited the case of a study currently underway on the railway
in Senegal, which has already cost 19 billion CFA francs (about
25 million US dollars) and has not yet been concluded. |
| |
| He
said countries in Asia devote less resources to studies and
yet achieve better economic results. |
| |
| On
education, Wade called for "fewer studies and more achievements".
In particular, he advocated equal access to education for both
sexes. The gap between women and men is due to women's difficult
access to school. |
| |
| "When
I was a teacher, I had a class of 85 students, all of them boys",
he said, stressing that this has resulted in the unequal representation
of men and women in decision-making positions in many institutions
of the day. "Even here (Forum), females make up only 0.5 percent
of the 1,500 participants. This is what we should correct first
of all". |
| |
| Education
in Africa, he said, is beset with the problem insufficient places
at the primary school level just as it is difficult for high
school graduates to obtain work after their studies. The solution
to this phenomenon lies in part in carrying out reforms of the
education system. This could involve shortening the secondary
cycle and creating a new education cycle comparable to the college
system in English-speaking countries. |
| |
| He
said such a system would have the advantage of training larger
numbers of students up to a level comparable to the first cycle
of higher education and remove the pressure on the universities,
which would focus more on graduate postgraduate studies. |
| |
| Mr.
Wade suggested that adult education should take the form of
literacy training in national languages. A literate environment
simply needs to be created in these languages by publishing
newspapers, books and other reading materials to accompany the
literacy programmes. |
| |
