19 January 2010: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Irina Bokova, Director-General of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), have launched the “Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2010” at UN Headquarters in New York, US.
At the report’s launch, Ban stressed the fundamental right to education, which he said should not be based on wealth, gender, race, ethnicity or language. The report highlights that girls are often the first to feel the impacts of climate change. It cites the examples of Pakistan and Uganda, where climate-related shocks result in far more girls being taken out of school than boys. The report indicates that cross-country research on past economic crises and climate events shows that the effects of shocks on schooling tend to be more pronounced in low-income countries than in middle-income countries. The report also finds that about 72 million children worldwide are still out of school, as a result of countries’ slower economic growth and rising poverty, which increases marginalization in education. Often, the children of the poorest households are most likely to suffer adverse consequences with regard to education, health and nutrition, and poverty tends to persist across generations. Bokova noted that there is a financing gap of US$16 billion per year to reach the education goal and urged donor countries and the G20 group of developed and developing countries to scale up aid needed. [UNESCO Press Release][UN Press Release][UN Secretary-General’s Speech] [The Report]