Education theme for UNICEF's State of the World's Children 1999

The fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was observed around the world on 10 December. UNICEF says that 130 million children in developing countries do not go to school, and a billion people, mostly women, cannot read or write — "a violation of rights and a loss of potential and productivity the world can no longer tolerate."

Making right to education a reality

UNICEF calls for stronger action in Africa and other developing regions


Sub-Saharan Africa needs to spend an extra $1.9 bn a year in order to attain universal primary enrolment by 2010, says the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). The region spends $9 bn a year on education, but this is only half the 1980 level of per capita spending and over 40 million children are not in school, UNICEF observes in The State of the World's Children, 1999. Meanwhile, it adds, the region's debt service payments exceeded $12 bn in 1996.

Although quality education is widely seen as a basic human right that also promotes economic development, gaining access to it remains a struggle for many children in Africa and other parts of the developing world. UNICEF points out that discrimination against girls is the largest impediment to achieving universal primary education. Launching the report in London on 8 December, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy noted the "devastating, and even life-threatening consequences" of inadequate access to education, particularly for girls and women, and called for more decisive action.

African countries were among the 155 nations that committed themselves, at the 1990 World Conference on Education for All, to ensuring greater access to improved schooling for girls and women. The conference recognized that more and better schooling for girls and women generates many social benefits such as lower mortality and morbidity rates for infants, children and women, as well as higher levels of nutrition and educational attainment. But after making some progress, sub-Saharan Africa's net primary school enrolment for girls is currently lower, at 51 per cent, than in 1985, UNICEF says.

Through its global Girls' Education Programme, UNICEF is supporting efforts to reduce gender disparities in educational access in the three regions with the widest gaps — sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa. UNICEF is also backing an African Girls' Education Initiative in over 20 countries that aims to help increase girls' enrolment, improve educational systems and increase the relevance and gender sensitivity of the curriculum.

In a related effort to provide schooling at sustainable levels of quality and gender balance within 10-15 years, the Forum of African Women Educators (FAWE) has worked on a programme of Strategic Resource Planning (SRP) with the UK's Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University. The programme took off in Ethiopia, Guinea and Tanzania in 1995 and has since been taken up in Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia. The SRP helps education ministries to focus on specific problems facing girls, collect and analyze relevant data, and develop policy options for closing the gender gap and ensuring universal primary schooling. One novelty is the participation of local communities, teachers, policy-makers and donors in discussing SRP research findings.

The SRP is a key part of FAWE's work on gender and primary schooling in Africa, which has seen some countries moving towards implementation of major proposals. In Ethiopia, this could involve automatic promotion in the first five grades, and double shifts for three-quarters of primary and secondary students. Through such measures, Ethiopia could raise gross primary enrolment rates of 39 per cent for boys and 24 per cent for girls to 102 and 106 per cent respectively within 15 years. In another example, Guinea has identified early marriage as the main reason for low completion rates for girls, and the government has now made it illegal to force a girl into marriage before the ninth grade.

There is much to do to turn the right to education into a global reality, but the effort is the "soundest investment in a peaceful and prosperous future that we can make for our children," UNICEF concludes.




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