World Literacy Day 2012 - Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,

Illiteracy, Says Secretary-General in Message, Hobbles Efforts to Achieve Millennium Development Goals, Build Inclusive Knowledge Societies ---


Following is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for International Literacy Day, observed on 8 September: ---

 Literacy provides tools for men and women to better understand the world and shape it to meet their aspirations. It is a source of individual dignity and a motor for the healthy development of society. International Literacy Day is an opportunity to celebrate this transformative force and mobilize to make the most of it.

--- Great strides have been made during the United Nations Literacy Decade that closes this year. Across the world, individuals, communities and countries have reached out to children, youth and adults to enable them to read, write and transform their lives. As a result, some 90 million young men and women and adults have become literate. We must now go much further. An estimated 775 million young people and adults around the world still cannot read or write; 122 million children of primary and lower secondary school age remain out of school; and millions still graduate with inadequate literacy skills. Women account for two-thirds of the world’s illiterate population. The persistence of such numbers hobbles our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and to build the inclusive knowledge societies we need for the twenty-first century.

---- We must move faster to reach the most marginalized and uphold this basic human right. The global movement for education needs a big push. That is why, later this month, I will be launching a new Education First initiative.

--- The initiative focuses on three priorities: putting every child in school; improving the quality of learning; and fostering global citizenship. I call on world leaders and all involved with education to join this initiative. The cost of leaving millions of children and young people on the margins of society is far greater than the funds required to reach the international goals for education.

--- Ask any parent what they want for their children, even in war zones and disaster areas where food, medicine and shelter might be considered the highest priorities, and the answer is the same: education for children. Ask any child what he or she wishes to be when they grow up, and the answer is rooted in education. Education is the gateway to fulfilling those aspirations.

--- A literate world is a more peaceful world, and a more harmonious and healthy world. On this observance of International Literacy Day, let us pledge to join together to move the literacy agenda forward.

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The United Nations literacy decade (UNLD)

THE WORLD is observing the International Literacy Day on September 8 . Established in 1965 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the International Literacy Day  is observed every year, on this day.

Especially dedicated to the cause of literacy, the World Literacy Day is observed with the aim to spread the message of literacy among children and youth living across the world.

Since its inception, this day became a special occasion for literacy awareness and many educational programmes featured the particular day. But in the year 1990, the United Nations General Assembly provided a boost to global literacy by announcing that year as International Literacy Year. The special year signified the ongoing commitment of the world community to recognise and support literacy as a key to personal development and to the socio-economic progress of nations.

Since 2000, for spreading literacy across the world in large scale various governments of the world have launched four initiatives in cooperation with several agencies of the United Nations. These four initiatives are:

Education for all; the millennium development goals; the United Nations literacy decade and; the United Nations decade of education for sustainable development.

Education for All (EFA): The world education forum organised on 26-28 April 2000 in Dakar, adopted the Dakar framework for action, ’Education for All: Meeting our collective commitments’, which sets six goals with a target date of 2015.

The millennium development goals (MDGs) : In 2000, the UN General Assembly adopted the millennium declaration as a way of expressing common worldwide priorities in development, which governments and international agencies would work towards focussing on eight goals with a target date of 2015.

The United Nations literacy decade (UNLD): The UN General Assembly launched the literacy decade from 2003 to 2012 to mobilise the resources and political will to meet the learning needs of illiterate people living around the world.

The United Nations decade of education of sustainable development (DESD): The UN General Assembly called for the decade of education for sustainable development from 2005 to 2014 to mobilise efforts on the widespread global implementation of education for the same.

Besides above mentioned programmes, several other educational missions have been launched by the governments of world to make the people literate. In India too, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Adult Education Programme, District Primary Education Programme and many such initiatives have been introduced by the government to make the people literate.

Of course, such literacy programmes have become successful, but still a fair portion of country’s population in illiterate. According to stats of United Nations there are about four billion literate people across the world. However, making the whole world literate is still an unaccomplished goal.

The fact is that without making the whole world literate we cannot expect all round development. Most importantly, our country is lagging behind other developing countries in the field of education. We blame the government for the dwindling literacy rate in the country, but we hardly care for teaching our illiterate neighbours. On this special day, let us vow to make our country as well as the world literate. It is possible if we begin on our own by sparing some time for uneducated people living around us.