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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Mon Sep 20 2010 - 10:07:18 EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68J0EQ20100920
Education in poor countries hurt by financial crisis
By Michelle Nichols
NEW YORK | Mon Sep 20, 2010 12:22am EDT
(Reuters) - As world leaders meet this week to review a U.N. bid to
cut poverty and hunger by 2015, the Global Campaign for Education
warned that the financial crisis had halted improvements in education
for children in impoverished countries.
There are 69 million children out of school around the world, said a
report on the world's 60 poorest nations by the campaign, a coalition
of more than 100 organizations.
But if all those children could be educated to leave school with just
basic reading skills, about 171 million people could be lifted out of
poverty, it said.
"If scientists can genetically modify food and NASA can send missions
to Mars, politicians must be able to find the resources to get
millions of children into school and change the prospects of a
generation of children," said the campaign's president, Kailash
Satyarthi.
A decade ago the United Nations agreed eight Millennium Development
Goals, which included ensuring that by 2015 all children will be able
to complete primary schooling and that gender disparity in all levels
of education be eliminated.
"The momentum of the last 10 years could still be harnessed to make
education for all a reality within five years," said former British
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a member of the Global Campaign for
Education High Level Panel.
"If education budgets are not protected from the ravages of the
financial crisis all that progress could be jeopardized and
generations will be condemned to poverty," he said.
The report estimated that $4.6 billion annually would be lost from
education budgets in sub-Saharan Africa due to the impact of the
global financial crisis. That amounts to a 13 percent drop in
resources for each primary school pupil.
"Poor countries are on a worsening trajectory as severe and deepening
pressure from the economic downturn caused by the crisis of the rich
world's banking system bites on their budgets," the 34-page report
said.
"The goal that could have the greatest impact on economic growth,
improved health and social welfare and development is ensuring
universal access to good quality education."
The worst places in the world for a child to try to get an education
were Somalia, Eritrea, Haiti and the Comoros islands off Africa's east
coast, the report said.
The study made several recommendations including that poor countries
devote 20 percent of their budgets to education and that rich nations
double their aid for basic education to $8 billion in 2011.
In sub-Saharan Africa, providing every mother with secondary education
would save the lives of 1.8 million children every year, the campaign
said.
(Editing by Mark Egan and Chris Wilson)
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