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UNITED NATIONS INITIATIVE ON GIRL'S EDUCATION LAUNCHED AT THE
OPENING OF LARGEST EDUCATION CONFERENCE IN A DECADE |
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 Dakar,
Senegal, 26 April - United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan
launched a 10-year initiative on girl's education at the opening
today of the World Education Forum, the largest education conference
in the past decade committing more than 180 participating countries
to ensure that universal access to quality basic education is
achieved and sustained by 2015. |
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| "Educating
girls is a social development policy that works (…) It has immediate
benefits for nutrition, health, savings and reinvestment at
the family, community and ultimately country level," said Kofi
Annan. " It is a long-term investment that yields an exceptionally
high return. It is also, I would venture, a tool for preventing
conflict and building peace. From generation to generation,
women have passed on the culture of peace." |
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| Statistics
released at the conference confirmed that sixty percent of the
world's 113 million out-of-school children are girls. "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 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child," Mr Annan
said. |
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| In
his welcoming remarks to the some 1,500 delegates to the Forum,
President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal noted that "just 0.3% of
the delegates to the conference are women (….) women should
participate in decision-making." He stressed that "education
is about making men and women citizens of their times. We need
to prepare men and women who can live in this century. No African
child must feel like an outsider in this global village." "There
is too much waste and delay on the part of international organizations
while we are under pressure by our populations who are expressing
their needs in no uncertain terms" said the Senegalese President.
He then called for "less reports and more tangible achievements."
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The World Education Forum will, among other things, synthesize
the results of the largest, most comprehensive and statistically
rigorous stocktaking of education in history. More than 180
countries took part in this two-year Education for All 2000
Assessment, carried out by national teams working together with
ten regional advisory groups comprising UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA,
UNICEF, the World Bank, bilateral donor agencies, development
banks and inter-governmental organizations. |
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The Forum will assess the lessons, achievements and failures
in the decade following the 1990 World Conference on Education
for All (Jomtien, Thailand). Since the Jomtien Conference --
which brought together education ministers and policy-makers
from more than 150 countries -- the number of children in school
has risen from 599 million to 681 million from 1990 to 1998,
while the number of out-of-school children has correspondingly
decreased from 127 million to 113 milllion in that time. However,
organizers stress, the quality of education and teacher training
has in many cases declined dramatically. Moreover, the proportion
of women illiterates - more than 60 per cent of the estimated
880 million adult illiterates - is the same number as 10 years
ago. In addition, little progress has been made worldwide to
assure basic education for millions of ethnic and linguistic
minorities, the disabled, remote and rural dwellers, street
children and orphans, particularly post-conflict and HIV/AIDS
orphans. |
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"AIDS constitutes one of the biggest threats to the global education
agenda. What HIV/AIDS does to the human body, it also does to
institutions. It undermines those institutions that protect
us," said Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS. He noted
that in Zambia, two-thirds of newly trained teachers die of
AIDS each year, and that in Côte d'Ivoire five teachers die
per week on average, mostly from AIDS. "It is no exageration
to say that in the age of AIDS, life skills education is far
from a luxury -- it will literally save millions of lives."
He said that half of new infections are among young people between
the ages of 15 and 24, while pointing to evidence that sex education
is an effective preventive tool rather than causing increased
sexual promiscuity. |
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| The
Dakar Forum will conclude Friday with the adoption of a Framework
for Action obliging the more than 180 participating countries
to ensure universal access to quality basic education. The draft
Framework puts forward eleven practical and sustainable strategies
informed by the experiences of the past and the changing global
context of the twenty-first century, which have already been
committed to by the international community as a result of six
major preparatory regional EFA conferences convened in late
1999 and early 2000. These include a new and greater focus on
improving the quality of education, as well as early childhood
care, girls education, reaching all others who continue to be
excluded from education, as well as assuring that new technologies
do not widen disparities in education. |
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| "Education
is too vital to be left alone to governments or states," warned
Graca Machel, chairperson of the opening plenary and former
Minister of Education in Mozambique. "We must go beyond mandates
of one government (….) by 2015 many governments will have changed
but education must remain the priority, with the need for mechanisms
to monitor progress." She said the major themes of the Forum
must be quality, equity as well as education for democracy,
along with the need to assure an effective follow-up mechanism. |
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Heads of State, education ministers and key decision makers
from more than 180 countries are taking part in the Dakar Forum,
along with representatives from more than 100 international
and grassroots NGOs. Participants representing the United Nations
family include Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General; Peter Piot,
Executive Director of UNAIDS; Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator
of the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP); Koichiro Matsuura,
Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); Carol Bellamy, Executive
Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF); Nafis
Sadik, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund
(UNFPA); and James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank.
The Forum was organized and convened jointly by UNDP, UNESCO,
UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Bank, with UNESCO providing the
Forum Secretariat. |
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At the close of today's opening plenary, more than 1,000 Senegalese
school children --organized by the non-governmental coalition
Global Campaign for Education-- greeted the UN Secretary-General
and called on the Forum to assure universal, quality education
for all children around the world. |
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For
more information:
contact
the World Education Forum media co-ordination office
at tel (221) 826 80 52 or (221) 641 8281
or email a.muller@unesco.org
WEBSITE: www.education.unesco.org/efa
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