International DEVELOPMENT REPORT - April 14, 2003:
UNESCO Literacy Campaign
By Jill Moss
This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
The United Nations has launched a new ten-year
campaign to increase literacy around the world. People with literacy
skills can read and write. People who are not able to read and write
are considered illiterate.
There are currently about eight-hundred-sixty-million
illiterate people around the world. That is one out of every five adults
over age fifteen. Two-thirds of them are women. In addition, more than
one-hundred-thirteen-million children do not attend school and are failing
to learn to read and write.
The main message of the U-N campaign is "Literacy
as Freedom." Deputy U-N Secretary General Louise Frechette launched
the campaign in February during a special ceremony at U-N headquarters
in New York City.
She said that literacy is needed for a healthy,
fair and successful world. She also noted the importance of education
for girls and women to improve conditions in developing countries. That
is why the first two years of the campaign will be aimed at improving
the literacy of females.
The U-N Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization will supervise the campaign. UNESCO head Koichiro Matsuura
says the push for worldwide literacy is linked to human rights. He believes
that literacy can help improve development and economic growth in poor
countries.
The wife of President Bush, Laura Bush, was
also present to launch the campaign. She said the United States plans
to invest more than three-hundred-million dollars to support education
in schools around the world. An estimated one-hundred-million dollars
of that money will be spent in Africa. About seventy percent of the
world's illiterate adults live in South and West Asia, Africa, and the
Middle East.
The United Nations hopes the new campaign will
help increase world literacy by fifty percent by the year two-thousand-fifteen.
This is just one of six goals set during a world education meeting in
Dakar, Senegal in two-thousand. However, officials say seventy-nine
countries are currently at risk of not meeting the literacy goal.
The U-N says the literacy campaign will be a
huge test. But it will also be an important chance to improve the lives
of millions of people around the world.This VOA Special English Development
Report was written by Jill Moss.
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