SECRETARY-GENERAL PRAISES PRIMARY SCHOOL IN CAPITAL OF BURKINA FASO

 

FOR HAVING ENROLLED MORE GIRLS THAN BOYS

 

(Translated from the original French.)

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s speech on the occasion of his visit to Manegda Primary School in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on 23 April:

Thank you for your warm welcome.  I am very happy to be visiting your school because I am firmly convinced that education is the key to a successful life.

I would like to tell you, pupils, that education opens many doors and that you must keep working hard to achieve all your ambitions.  I would like to ask you, teachers, parents and all those who surround the children who attend this school, to do your utmost to ensure that they receive the best possible education.

Ensuring universal primary education is one of the priority goals that the United Nations, in collaboration with the world’s Governments, is trying to achieve.  It is one of the eight goals more commonly known as the Millennium Development Goals.

Here in Manegda, you are making a remarkable contribution to the achievement of those Goals.  There are even more girls than boys at your school, which has thus achieved another Millennium Development Goal, namely, the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.  Such progress should be encouraged by your Government, your parents and your teachers so that all young girls in Burkina Faso can benefit from education to the university level.

This visit is a real inspiration for me.  Upon my return to New York, I will be donating 100 computers to Burkina Faso so that children from schools like yours can have the opportunity to use new technologies.

I wish you all a very successful school year.

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For information media • not an official record