| News
bulletin board of UNESCO's Education Sector |
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No.
2
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Welcome
to the electronic news bulletin board of UNESCO's Education
Sector, informing you about UNESCO's follow-up activities
to the World Education Forum in Dakar (April 2000). The
bulletin board currently exists in English only, but will
shortly be available in French as well.
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Contents (28 July 2000)
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UNESCO ACTION PLAN FOR DAKAR FOLLOW-UP FOR YOUR COMMENTS
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BASIC EDUCATION HITS THE AGENDA OF G-8 SUMMIT
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| EFA
PARTNERS INVITED TO COMMENT ON UNESCO ACTION PLAN |
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 A
revised draft Action Plan outlining UNESCO's vision for follow-up
activities to the Dakar Forum is now being circulated to relevant
Education for All partners for information and comments. |
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| The
Action Plan, attached to this bulletin board, is the
result of wide-ranging consultations to determine the concrete
modalities of implementing the Dakar Framework for Action.
A previous version of the plan was sent to the heads of UNDP,
UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Bank and discussed during the
mission of Jacques Hallak, UNESCO's Assistant Director-General
for Education, to the United States earlier this week. Their
pertinent comments have now been incorporated in the revised
draft. |
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| "We
now hope to receive more comments and suggestions from a larger
audience of EFA stakeholders," says Mr Hallak. He was very
encouraged to see the enthusiasm of UNESCO's partners in New
York and Washington for the EFA agenda. |
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Mr Hallak met with Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF,
and her colleagues working in education, Eduardo Doryan, Vice-president
of the World Bank, and Maris O'Rourke, head of the new EFA
taskforce in the Bank, Kunio Waki, Deputy Executive Director
of UNFPA, and Nitin Desai, Under-Secretary-General for Economic
and Social Affairs of the United Nations, as well as representatives
of the United States government. |
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all welcomed UNESCO's efforts in the follow-up to Dakar and
are mobilizing and promoting EFA within their own organizations.
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| G-8
LEADERS ENDORSE GLOBAL COMMITMENT TO EFA |
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| At
the request of UNESCO, the Dakar Framework for Action was
on the agenda of this week's G-8 Summit in Okinawa, Japan.
In the final communiqué of the summit, the leaders of the
world's richest countries state that "we have agreed to (...)
follow up vigorously the conclusions of the recent Dakar Conference
on Education by ensuring that additional resources are made
available for basic education." |
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adds, "we reaffirm our commitment that no government seriously
committed to achieving education for all will be thwarted
in this achievement by lack of resources." |
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leaders commit themselves to "strengthen efforts bilaterally
and together with international organizations and private
sector donors to achieve the goals of universal primary education
by 2015 and gender equality in schooling by 2005." And they
call on international financial institutions, in partnership
with developing countries, to focus on education in their
poverty reduction strategies and to provide greater assistance
for countries with sound education strategies. |
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"These strategies should maximise the potential benefits of
IT in this area through distance learning wherever possible
and other effective means," the communiqué says. |
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Jacques Hallak, UNESCO's Assistant Director-General for Education,
calls the G-8 communiqué "an extremely positive sign" and
"a step forward". |
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"The statement is a clear endorsement by some of the world's
most important donors to the financial commitments made in
Dakar," he says. |
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In a letter to the Japanese authorities preparing the Summit,
UNESCO said that the "G-8 should strongly commit itself in
favour of additional financial support for basic education,
as well as in favour of more extensive and broader debt relief
and/or debt cancellation for poverty reduction, with a huge
emphasis being placed on basic education." |
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According to Mr Hallak, UNESCO has started to reflect on how
to renew financing mechanisms for basic education and, more
broadly, to ensure more effective and regular monitoring and
reporting of external assistance flow. Based on extensive
consultations with international financial institutions, the
Organization is preparing a position paper on this issue,
which will be shared with the readers of this bulletin board
in a few weeks. |
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The G-8 communiqué Okinawa 2000 can be found at |
| http://www.g8kyushu-okinawa.go.jp/e/documents/commu.html |
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