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Five IGO Plans For Global Educational Improvement In 2016

Five-IGO-Plans-For-Global-Educational-Improvement-In-20162015 was an active and often successful year for global education in terms of aid and education programs. UNESCO and USAID have several programs that will continue to be enforced into 2016. The following list of International Governmental Organization, or IGO plans provide various global education agreements.

1. UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning

This program is designed for communicating the importance of a quality primary and secondary education. The site includes education reports on several countries, suggestions for improving learning outcomes such as a “contextualized [education] to each regions specific realities,” and financial strategies for covering program costs.

The learning portal has been accessible since January 2016, from anywhere and at no cost to individuals.

2. The Joint Programme

This program,continuing enforcement in 2016, consists of educational focus in Mali, Nepal, Niger, Pakistan, Sudan and Tanzania. The program lists its four main components:

  • Improving the quality of education in the regions
  • Increasing relations between health and education sects
  • Creating an enabling environment
  • Advancing the data and evidence-base

The program is unique in that it seeks to eliminate the social problems young girls deal with beginning in puberty. It seeks to educate girls about the risks of pregnancy, and their rights to refrain from young and enforced marriages.

3. UNESCO And Panasonic

UNESCO has entered a public-private relationship with Panasonic, launching the program Strengthening Schools for Education for Sustainable Development in Myanmar. The program seeks to teach young children to read while promoting sustainable and effective global citizen lifestyles.

It will also advocate the principles of protecting the environment, ethical and civil principles and sustainable development.

Additionally, Panasonic has donated 500 Eneloop Solar Storage Units to 40 schools for an effective learning environment. The Chief Representative of Panasonic expresses their hopes the donation will be useful to students studying late at night and during power outings.

4. USAID in Jordan

Through USAID, the U.S. Government plans to build 25 new schools in Jordan in collaboration with the Let Girls Learn Initiative. With overcrowded classrooms the norm in urban Jordan, the plan is to construct more schools. The initiative will be available to 25,000 children each year.

The funds will be directed towards 70 percent of girls’ schools, also available to the thousands of Syrian refugees finding safe haven in Jordanian schools. The initiative will be particularly advantageous for girls in Jordan who are known to have limited access to education.

5. USAID’s Enrichment Initiative To Increase Literacy At The Primary School Level

This initiative is planned to continue into March 2016 in Jamaica. The program has successfully shown improvements in literacy in 2015. This has been accomplished through integrating technology into lessons and advocating for parental and teacher participation. To date, the program has reached 43,000 students and hopes to reach thousands more in 2016.

UNESCO claims that worldwide 250,000 children are not learning the basic skills needed to successfully participate in society and receive a decent livelihood. Furthermore, the organization explains that it isn’t enough to increase student enrollment alone, but also the quality of the education they’re receiving.

– Mayra Vega

Sources: UNESCO 1, USAID 1, UNESCO 2, UNESCO 3
Photo: Google Images

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UN Study Says Global Education Has Declined

Global_Education
The number of children and young adolescents receiving education has worsened in a time when primary and secondary education goals have been put in place, according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS).

In a study released this month, the UIS data for the school year in 2013 shows that 124 million children and young adolescents have either dropped out of school or never started school. This number rose by 2 million since 2011. The number of primary school aged children not in school increased by 2.4 million between 2010 and 2013. Of these 59 million children, 9 percent are denied the right to education. In addition, there are almost 65 million young adolescents not receiving an education.

The UIS study offers two causes to explain the rise in children and young adolescents out of school.

First, areas in Sub-Saharan Africa have struggled to provide schooling to communities with populations of people aged mostly 6 to 15 years. These developing areas have not yet created stable economies to create proper schools and education systems for the majority of their citizens.

The second reason that the UIS focuses on is the grand procedures that were taken by many countries to create greater access to education. These measures launched global education at the start of the century but did little to institute strategies for continual improvement.

To fix this problem, Irina Bokova, UNESCO’s Director General, agrees with the report that new methods and “serious commitments” must be implemented to reach communities with the least amount of children and young adolescents in school.

“Targeted interventions are needed to reach the most marginalized children and youth who are out of school today, including those with disabilities; from ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities; and children affected by armed conflict,” the UIS study said.

The study also said that the large attempts to end gender discrimination in education have not been successful. In South and West Asia, less than half of the children and young adolescents receiving education are girls.

“While the gap is considerably smaller than in the early 2000s, UIS data show little improvement in recent years, despite the many campaigns and initiative designed to break the barriers that keep girls out of school,” UIS said.

With hopes of changing these numbers, a summit in September will host world leaders in hopes of creating new Sustainable Development Goals to address education.

Although this is a great step for bettering global education, improving education will be more difficult than ever. The World Education Forum in Korea in May 2015 said that in order to achieve education goals, 12 years of funding must be given. Additionally, the Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report team has projected that a sum of at least US$39 billion will be needed to fund universal satisfactory secondary education by 2030.

Aaron Benavot, Director of the EFA GMR, also said that funding needs to be drastically increased: “Aid needs to be shooting upwards, not creeping up by a few percentage points.”

Benavot said that The Oslo Summit on Education for Development and the Third Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa in August will show whether or not donors are willing. In agreement with Benavot, the UIS suggests that improvement from the levels reached in 2010 does not look promising, and donors must move education to the top of their list to really make a difference. A large change in funding must be made in order to start a worldwide effort for access to education. This year will show if our world is truly ready to fight for education.

– Fallon Lineberger

Sources: UNESCO 1, UNESCO 2, United Nations
Photo: Saturno

The Price to Educate the World

educate_the_world
This past weekend, many international leaders and education advocates met in Oslo to discuss strategies on how to meet the Millennium Goal of education, as well as discuss the price to educate the world. Among the attendees were UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon, Malala Yousafzai and former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

A high-level panel offered diverse perspectives on financing education. The Indonesian Education Minister, Anies Baswedan pointed out the need to bring down high cost education affecting teaching materials, curriculums and assessment. Rwanda’s Prime Minister Paul Kagame said one of the key factors for successful educational reform was strong partnerships.

Ms. Yousafzai addressed the congregation, urging the international community to spend more money on projects to provide education to those in poverty. She told them, “We will not stop. We will continue to speak out and raise our voices until we see every child in school.”

When the world’s leaders met during the Millennium Summit in September of 2000, they outlined eight core areas of need to reduce extreme poverty in the world. Among those eight core areas, one of the goals was to ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, would be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. To this day, only two of the eight goals have been met, and education is not one of them.

According to the Malala fund, the NGO she helped start, Universal fee-free primary and secondary education for a 12-year period costs an estimated $340 billion per year through 2030. The United States defense budget was $526.6 billion in 2014 alone.

In a July 2015 report released by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the number of out of school students around the world is on the rise, reaching 124 million in 2013. That figure includes 59 million primary students and 65 million young adolescents aged from 12 to 15 years old. This is up from the 122 million that was reported in 2011.

Age is not the only disparity in the fight to educate all children. Efforts to abolish gender gaps have broken down in recent years. Although they are better than in the earlier 2000s when the program was initiated, progression has gone stagnant. According to the 2013 figures, 1 in 10 girls and 1 in 12 boys were out of school in 2013.

The study gives two explanations for the recent decline. First, the sub-Saharan countries are finding it hard to keep up with the rising demand of school education from the school-age population that is experience a surge in population.

Secondly, the old business model that was proposed in the early 2000s is outdated. That model included abolishing tuition fees, the construction of new schools and a system of more teachers, classrooms and textbooks.

The world must come together to pool resources in order to reach the goals set out in the Millennium Development Goals and address the challenges of the UNESCO report. On the fifteenth anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations is expected to adopt a new set of Sustainable Development Goals that will call for universal primary and secondary for all students by 2030.

This is definitely a step in the right direction, but will require more cooperation and resources from the international community and national governments. The World Bank has invested US $4 billion in education alone. This year, they have created a new Results in Education for All Children Trust Fund (REACH). Norway was the first donor followed by USAID. That aid must be used efficiently and with proper strategy.

According to the UNESCO report, what is needed now are “targeted interventions to reach the most marginalised children and youth who are out of school today, including those with disabilities; from ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities; and children affected by armed conflict.” Continuous citizen advocacy is need to make sure U.S. foreign aid stays consistent over the course of the next 15 years in its commitments to universal education, or else the price to educate the world will go even higher.

– Adnan Khalid

Sources: U.S. Department of Defense, Government of Norway, Malala Fund, United Nations, UNESCO, The World Bank
Photo: Flickr

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Education for Children with Disabilities in Ethiopia

children_with_disabilities
One in seven Ethiopians has a disability. In Ethiopia, disability is generally considered to be a curse, so families as well as communities discriminate against people with disabilities. In the past, only 0.7 percent of disabled people in Ethiopia have had access to an education. This situation has been changing as education for the disabled in Ethiopia is becoming more and more inclusive.

The 2011 World Report on Disability states that attitudes toward disabilities have been shifting “from a medical understanding towards a social understanding.” Today, inclusive education is no longer an amenity but the target approach to education in both developed and developing countries.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s 2009 Guidelines on Inclusion in Education state: “Inclusive education is essential to achieve social equity and is a constituent element of lifelong learning.” This means that inclusive education is not a marginal issue but is a necessary component of a quality education for all learners and the development of inclusive societies.

Inclusive education means that marginalized and mainstream children are schooled together unless that approach does not provide an education of equal quality. Some services, such as physical rehabilitation or learning Braille and sign language, can still be provided outside the mainstream classroom when necessary. Marginalized children are not just children with disabilities but have been excluded due to gender, HIV and AIDS, ethnicity, language, religion, economic status and social standing.

Inclusive education is a challenge in both developed and developing countries. It requires changes in a community’s attitude, educational system and finances. It is also strongly linked to the Education for All goals and the Millennium Development Goals. In order to achieve these goals, attention must not only be paid to ensuring that all children attend school, but that they are also provided a quality education. Children who are excluded are not receiving an education of good quality.

The Ethiopian government recognizes the significant role of education in reducing poverty and sustaining economic growth. It is committed to accomplishing the EFA goals and the MDGs. In 1994, the government established an education and training policy with an overall goal of including all citizens in active participation in the community and society. Aligned with the Ethiopian constitution, the policy promotes inclusive education.

In 2009, UNESCO noted that Ethiopia had made considerable progress in reaching the EFA goals but also noted a gap in the ability to provide access to all children. It noted these specific barriers to realizing inclusive education: lack of knowledge about diversity, inadequate preparation of teachers and educational leaders, poor teaching methods, inflexible curriculum, inappropriate learning equipment, insufficient needs identification and inadequate assessment procedures. These gaps resulted in obliging students with special needs to adapt to the schools instead of adapting schools to the needs of the students.

These gaps also pointed out the need to adjust community attitudes, educational services and financial priorities in order to succeed at inclusion. In 2005, Rehabilitation and Prevention Initiative Against Disability, an organization that works to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities, began providing services in Ethiopia that address these three needs. RAPID provides community based services that focus on changing negative community attitudes and supporting children and youth with disabilities to participate as equal members of the community and contribute to the economy.

RAPIDs programs operate on four essential principles in order to realize effective inclusion of children and youth with disabilities:

1. Provide comprehensive physical rehabilitation to serve the poorest children and youth
2. Create programs and projects that help schools to ensure inclusion
3. Lead awareness raising activities that help communities learn about the causes and effects of disability and advocate for government implementation of existing policies regarding disability issues
4. Develop opportunities for youth with disabilities and their families to enter mainstream sources of employment

Since its inception in Ethiopia, RAPID has made progress on many fronts. These are some of the highlights as of 2013:

The community based rehabilitation programs have reached 450,000 people in four cities in the Arsi Zone of the Oromia Region.

  • Staff estimated that nearly 80 percent of the communities served are not only aware of disability issues but also recognize the abilities of people with disabilities.
  • Health centers provide free treatment for people with disabilities.
    The government funds a bus that transports people to rehabilitation services.
  • Accessibility of health centers has improved with sign language training so staff can communicate with deaf people.
  • During 2012, 210 people launched income-generating businesses.
    In 2009, all parents who were given a loan and training to earn a sustainable income and support their children to go to school reported earning a better income.

In these ways, schools in the Arsi Zone of the Oromia area of Ethiopia are adapting to the needs of the children and youth with disabilities. Ethiopia is on its way to removing the barriers that prevent people with disabilities from obtaining the common services of not only education but also healthcare, employment, transportation and information.

– Janet Quinn

Sources: CBM, Inclusive Education in Action, WHO, IBE
Photo: USAID

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With Successes Come Education Struggles

education_struggles
There have been many successes for girl’s education in the developing world. Challenges remain, however, creating a puzzle for problem solvers around the world.

Girls face many more education struggles than boys do. This is especially the case during puberty. For one girl living in Uganda who wants to be a doctor, lack of proper toilets causes embarrassment and results in missed days at school. “Some toilets don’t have doors and so we fear to enter as people can see or enter the toilets at any time. At the toilets, they don’t have water to flush or wash, and so it’s complicated to attend school when I have my period.”

While some might think this is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization or UNESCO has found differently. One in 10 girls across Africa miss school during their period. Half of girls attending school in Ethiopia miss between one and four days of school a month because of menstruation.

In India, the problem is even worse. Sixty-six percent of schools there do not have functioning toilets. Without private toilets, girls’ health is put at risk. Coupled with the stigma and taboos associated with menstruation and periods, and the result is often that girls drop out of school in the developing world.

Another issue that also affects girls’ education in Africa is child marriage. Every year, 15 million girls 18 or under marry. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 40 percent are married before 18, and 12 percent before they are even 15. In Chad, the number of girls married under age 15 jumps to 29 percent. Even with minimum age laws, marriages still go ahead with parental consent.

This has implications for young women’s education. Once they are married, they are expected to fulfill duties at home which leaves them with them no time to pursue their studies. This begins a vicious circle: without education girls are not informed of their rights and are able to act on them.

Despite these challenges, there have been huge gains in education for girls around the developing world. By 2012, most countries had reached the Millennium Development Goal target of girls primary education parity with boys. For many countries this meant that for every 100 boys, 97 girls also attended primary school.

However, even in this victory lies a caveat – not all countries have actually reached full parity. Sub-Saharan Africa enrollment rate for primary school-aged girls was still languishing at 75 percent in 2010. “Three-quarters of the countries that have not achieved parity at the primary level enroll more boys than girls at the start of the school cycle.” To equalize enrollment at the beginnings of school years would be to achieve parity.

Afghanistan stands out as a beacon of success when it comes to girls’ education, especially with the Taliban influence in the area that discourages girls in school. Girls enrollment in 2014 reached 3.75 million girls. In 2002, only 191,000 were enrolled.

While there are still big problems girls face around the developing world when it comes to attending school, it is important to acknowledge the victories. More work is needed but if progress continues, more successes will come.

– Gregory Baker

Sources: The Guardian 1, The Guardian 2, The Guardian 3, The Guardian 4, The Guardian 5, UN Women
Photo: The Better India

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How Mobile Phones Help the Poor

How Mobile Phones Help the Poor
Mobile technology has been shown to have a tremendous effect in helping alleviate global poverty. Over six billion of the approximately seven billion people in the world have access to mobile phones, as shown in a 2014 UNESCO report. By 2016, it is estimated that there will be one billion mobile phones in Africa. Such widespread access opens up a window of opportunity to utilize mobile technology as an instrument in improving the lives of users in developing countries.

According to UN Millennium Project Director Jeffrey Sachs, cell phones are the key instrument in transforming poverty-stricken lives.

“Poverty is almost equated with isolation in many places of the world,” he said, as quoted in a CNN article. “Poverty results from the lack of access to markets, to emergency health services, access to education, the ability to take advantage of government services and so on. What the mobile phone — and more generally IT technology — is ending is that kind of isolation in all its different varieties.”

From the educational sphere to the economy, access to mobile technology has already significantly improved the lives of many across various aspects of life.

 

4 Ways Mobile Phones Help the Poor

Literacy and education
Where there are no books, there are still mobile phones. Utilizing mobile technology is one of the easiest ways to increase literacy rates simply because phones are already in the hands of members of developing nations. Mobile reading provides a much cheaper and more convenient alternative to reading from books. While cell phones cannot teach users how to read, they are shown to significantly increase literacy retention rates. Several mobile applications and programs exist to increase access to mobile reading in the developing world. Programs such as MobiLiteracy Uganda provide parents with daily reading activities to complete with their children via audio SMS so that illiterate parents can still work to improve their children’s literacy. It is not necessary for users to own smartphones because even the cheapest mobile models allow access to mobile reading.

Agriculture
Mobile technology has completely transformed the lives of farmers in developing nations, as it allows them access to market prices without the timely concession of long-distance traveling to faraway markets. Additionally, access to weather information can help farmers prepare for in-climate conditions that may affect their crops. Several mobile applications exist to provide farmers with information about nearby markets and prices, mapping to potential clients, feeding schedules for cattle and local veterinary information.

Banking
Millions of Africans utilize mobile technology as a banking instrument. Since 2007, Safaricom and Vodafone’s M-PESA application has allowed users to store funds on their mobile decides in order to transfer funds to other users, pay bills, or make other purchases. In 2009, a 10th of Kenya’s GDP was being circulated via M-PESA. Former Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph noted that mobile technology has been transformative for the informal business sector, which comprises about 70 percent of jobs in Kenya. This increase has been instrumental in helping surge GDP rates throughout the developing world.

Health
Mobile phones allow endless distribution of health resources, which has led to the development of mHealth, or mobile health, programs. Field workers can use their mobile devices to work with experts to determine what conditions are treatable at a local level and what patients need to be transported to a hospital. This increased communication saves time and money and also helps to ensure appropriate treatment. Text messages have also shown to be vital in communicating stock levels of medications and resources in remote locations. Additionally, public health organizations have organized text message campaigns to increase preventative habits against fatal diseases.

– Arin Kerstein

Sources: CNN, Fortune, National Geographic, UNESCO, USAID,
Photo: Sustainable Brands

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What is the UN Plan for Global Education?

UN_plan_for_global_education
As part of the charter, the United Nations was created to help world development among many other ideas.

In 2000, the UN released the Millennium Goals, a set of goals to eradicate poverty by 2015. For education, the goal was to achieve universal primary education. The same year, the UN also announced the Education for All goals, which includes objectives like creating gender and ethnic equality for accessing education, increasing adult literacy, and improving the quality of education offered.

When the 2015 year began, the UN reevaluated these measures and how they have been successful. Primary education has reached 90 percent of the youth; however, 58 million children still remain out of school with about half of them being young girls. These children are either working, forced to marry, are slaves or are child soldiers.

Set backs in education such as natural disasters, wars or extremist that threaten stability can keep young children out of school and make aid accessibility for the children difficult. Other issues arise as well. Teachers are not trained correctly. There are not enough textbooks. Student to teacher ratios can be 146 to one in some cases. With issues like these, it is a struggle to provide each child with a quality, basic education. It is estimated that about 250 million children fall into this category.

The Post-2015 Development Agenda was created to address the education goals not reached by 2015. The new set of goals focuses on girls, children of ethnic minorities and disabled children.

In addition, it addresses how to finance the new projects. One dollar invested equals a $15 economic gain, and if all children had basic reading skills, then 170 million people would be raised out of poverty. The plan is to increase public investment in education by 4 to 6 percent of the each country’s GDP in hopes of reaching that 170 million people.

The UN encourages governments to work together and create agendas that promote transparency and collaboration. It also hopes that the UN organization for education, UNESCO, will continue to be a leader in educating the world’s poor.

– Katherine Hewitt

Sources: Education Envoy, Open Society Foundations, The Guardian, UNESCO
Photo: Flickr

Education Leaves Room for Improvement

Education
Humans of New York photographer, Brandon Stanton, has been on a 50 day world tour, visiting 10 countries and photographing each of the countries inhabitants. If close attention is paid, an underlying theme of education is present in many of the captions that accompany the posted photos.

This theme of education can be seen in photos from Iraq with young men telling of their dreams to become doctors and of another young man’s journey in the Master’s program at the University of Damascus. It can be seen in Jordan with a man’s story of giving up his chance of an upper division degree because he went to work to help pay for his brother’s education. It can be seen in various countries in Africa of children whose dreams are to become lawyers, nurses, pilots and engineers. The theme of education can be seen when parents who, wanting a better life for their son, hiked with him over mountains for a month and left him in India for better schooling, a sacrifice that has kept the family apart for the past 20 years.

Examples like this and many more merely show the importance and desire for education in developing countries. Just as inhabitants of developing countries wish for education for their younger generations, those in developing countries wish to give children the chance to learn, to one change the face of their countries and make changes for the better.

This wish can be seen through the efforts being made in the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education. This particular endeavor has made progress and was a joyous victory until a new report written by Geeta Rao Gupta, UNICEF Executive Director for Programs, this past July shows progress in helping children receive an education has come to a standstill.

Gupta reported from a new data released by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statics and Education for All Global Monitoring Report reveals, “an estimated 250 million children in the world cannot read, write or do basic math … ” Research shows more often than not, children not receiving an educational opportunity are girls. Currently there are over 30 million school-aged girls who do not have the privilege of simply attending school.

This staggering number calls for a move to action. Girls need to be given a chance at an education. CNN released a report on the benefits of educating girls, reporting educating a girl not only benefits herself, but her family, community and country. UNESCO informs that a child with a literate mother is 50 times more likely to survive past the age of five. CNN also reports of a World Bank study, “ … every 1 percent increase in women with secondary education boosted a country’s annual per capita income growth rate by about 0.3 percentage points.”

Studies like this bear out the importance of giving girls a chance to learn. In response to stalled universal primary education, UNICEF announced policy pledges, including “[increased] access to quality early learning opportunities for all children” and “[focused] efforts on expanding education for girls … ”

Though the road ahead is rough in ensuring all children receive a quality education, Gupta said, “We know that when we bring educational opportunities to the hardest to reach areas, we win a number of battles: learning improves, community engagement is reinforced, and children, particularly girls, can exercise their right to an education.”

– Kori Withers

Sources: UNICEF, Humans of New York, UNESCO, CNN
Photo: Tipton

ISIS Destroys Ancient Ruins

Centuries of history destroyed in less than a second. No, this is not a nightmare, but rather photographic and video evidence published by the British Broadcasting Corporation capturing the moment in which members of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) destroyed the Tomb of Jonah in Mosul, Iraq.
Despite his appearance in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, the Jonah’s shrine joined the list of ancient relics to be destroyed by the Sunni extremist group in Iraq’s second largest city.
Believers thought the site to be the final resting place of the prophet. Locals—many of whom welcomed the arrival of ISIS forces—condemned the destruction of the ancient spot and the religious texts the group failed to remove from within beforehand.
The past couple of weeks have witnessed similar demolitions of a 14th century mosque and shrine to Nabi Jerjis and the “Girl’s Tomb” in Mosul, as well as the Ahmed al-Rifai and Saad bin Aquel Husseiniya shrines in the Tal Afar area.
United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General, Ms. Irina Bokova, issued a statement on July 26, saying, “I am shocked by this violence against the millennial heritage of Iraq – destroying places of religious and cultural significance is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.” The agency worked with Iraqis last week to create the Response Action Plan that “defines priority interventions to mitigate heightened risks.” UNESCO joins the U.N. Secretary-General, the United States and Iran in denouncing the group as a threat to stability in the region.
ISIS also released a statement claiming absolute legitimacy in its actions. The group, which the U.S. has deemed worse than al-Qaeda, believes special emphasis on grave sites and relics contradict the true teachings of Islam. In fact, the extremists have dedicated an entire battalion to choosing which sites to target next. These members are charged with following certain guidelines such as eliminating any mosque standing on a tomb.
Locals who did not already flee the area have begun to demonstrate their frustration with ISIS. The ancient minaret of Mosul – a famous landmark in the city – was the next ISIS target, before citizens confronted and stopped the militants. As of July 31, ISIS has not destroyed the minaret. In another act of defiance, assailants shot and killed two ISIS members in the street on July 27.
The people of Mosul originally celebrated the victory of ISIS in opposition to the government, but the events in July have cost ISIS support from the locals. ISIS has severely limited human rights in its occupied land in an attempt to form a new caliphate with sharia law. Poverty in the province largely weakened opposition to the Sunni group, and according to the World Bank, the poverty rates in the region rose to 32 percent in 2012. This figure exceeds the national average by 12.2 percent, and would help explain why citizens might feel neglected. This, perhaps, would also explain why to a people with so little, these ancient relics would mean so much.
– Erica Lignell

Sources: Bloomberg, BBC, BBC 2, The Guardian, The Guardian 2, NBC News, NY Times, UNESCO
Photo: BBC

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Universal Primary Education by 2015

The Millennium Development Goal of having universal primary education worldwide by 2015 is under examination. UNESCO put out a statement saying that achieving this goal is no longer possible, but European Union development commissioner Andris Piebalgs says otherwise.

UNESCO claims that the goal of having all children in schools is unattainable because of insufficient financing available for education.

The goal of Education For All was instituted in 2000, and 2015 was its target for completion. However, as of 2014, 58 million children around the world are still not attending school.

The report put out by UNESCO stated that governments have to be the ones to fix the problems, and called on them to be the leaders of the movement. The problem comes mostly from the inability to provide education to people who are living with disadvantages, including poverty, gender, location or other factors. Governments must reevaluate their efforts and concentrate on these groups of people.

Piebalgs believes that education must start with the government as well, claiming, “Education is the first sign of equality; [it shows] that each child has access to the education system free of charge and that a state is taking care of its citizens.”

If governments can reach out to these marginalized children, then there is a possibility to still reach the Millennium Development Goal by the end of next year. Simply getting children enrolled in school is easy to do and costs very little.

Piebalgs, however, has expressed concern about what is to follow. He said, “We’ve looked on education in a rather shallow way: we set the target of getting kids into school and that was it – we were just hoping that they would get something out of school.” Continuing, the former headmaster explained, “But for me, what is crucial is the quality of education you get: the quality is not less important than enrollment. [sic]”

The difficulty now is to determine whether simply putting these 58 million children in school over the next year is worth potentially losing the quality of the education that they may receive. Despite what may have to happen after 2015, getting these children enrolled in school and emphasizing the importance of education to them could be life-changing for them.

– Hannah Cleveland

Sources: The Guardian, The Daily Star
Photo: The Guardian