A Plan to Address Literacy Is a Plan to Address the Millennium Development Goals

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Today, BloggersUnite celebrates International Literacy Day, the day on which UNESCO reminds the international community of the status of literacy and adult learning globally.

September 8 was proclaimed International Literacy Day by UNESCO on November 17, 1965. It was first celebrated in 1966. Its aim is to highlight the importance of literacy to individuals, communities and societies. On International Literacy Day each year, UNESCO reminds the international community of the status of literacy and adult learning globally. Celebrations take place around the world.

Since its foundation in 1946, UNESCO has been at the forefront of global literacy efforts and is dedicated to keeping literacy high on national, regional and international agendas.

September 8th International Literacy Day

Literacy is a cause for celebration since there are now close to four billion literate people in the world. However, literacy for all – children, youth and adults - is still an unaccomplished goal and an ever moving target. A combination of ambitious goals, insufficient and parallel efforts, inadequate resources and strategies, and continued underestimation of the magnitude and complexity of the task accounts for this unmet goal. Lessons learnt over recent decades show that meeting the goal of universal literacy calls not only for more effective efforts but also for renewed political will and for doing things differently at all levels - locally, nationally and internationally.

This is obviously tied to Millennium Development Goal No. 2. Universal Education with 67.4 million children not being provided an education.

While four billion people in the world are literate, there are still one in five adults or some 796 million adults lacking minimum literacy skills. About two-thirds of those are women, so Millennium Development Goal 3. Gender Equity is also a factor.

Since January 2003 through resolution A/RES/56/116 the United Nations has declared the United Nations Literacy Decade, 10-year focus on the topic and International Plan of Action for the Decade.

Why is literacy important?

Literacy is a human right, a tool of personal empowerment and a means for social and human development. Educational opportunities depend on literacy.Literacy is at the heart of basic education for all, and essential for eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy. There are good reasons why literacy is at the core of Education for All (EFA).

A good quality basic education equips pupils with literacy skills for life and further learning; literate parents are more likely to send their children to school; literate people are better able to access continuing educational opportunities; and literate societies are better geared to meet pressing development .

Zunia reports that Plan International is putting forward an Education Strategy 2010-2013 that covers the last 3 years of the UN Literacy Decade.

Plan is committed to high quality education for children and young people. This strategy focuses on Plan's 3 education priorities - improving equal access, enhancing quality and strengthening education governance.

Each strategic priority has a clear set of key actions designed to bring about change, not only for families, schools and communities, but also at national and international levels.

The strategy places particular emphasis on the need to eliminate gender discrimination, as well as focussing on other key challenges, such as the inclusion of marginalized children.

Education and literacy are the human capital basis for achieving the other 7 of the United Nations' Eight Goal Millennium Campaign. From September 17 to 19 we need to Make NOISE to let the United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals, taking September 20 to 22, 2010, know of their importance and the importance of all the Millennium Development Goals.

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• Twitter launches Literacy Day 2010 to eradicate illiteracy. (thenextweb.com)

Millennium Project on Trade Fair & Free

Sphere: Related Content Rav Casley Gera, late of the African Development for the Completely Bloody Ignorant blog, did a post on back on 1/28/08, which is about how late he has been. Rav provides policy suggestions from the U.N. Overview Report A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals section 3. Recommendations for the international system to support country-level processes. (pdf). I am paraphrasing here, as usual you can go to his article for more indepth information.

Rav recognizes what the UN argues in their 2004 report on strategies to meet the Millennium Development Goals that the "the slogan 'trade, not aid' is misguided." (p46). "Trade, not aid" is a common refrain used by conservatives arguing against increasing aid to Africa, but also by an increasing number of social entrepreneurs seeking to move beyond government foreign aid which is not sustainable. The debate is no less intense as two past posts from my other blog indicate. A Question of Nets Malaria and Social Aid A Question of Nets Malaria and Social Aid 2

Trade and aid are not mutually exclusive. Trading with other countries has helped transform Asian developing economies and slashed poverty. It is not the whole story and it is not a choice of either supplying aid to help keep people alive or compelling trade to force developing countries to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. First, you have to have boots.

The report is also explicit in its belief that, "in the long term, free trade is in everyone's best interest", meaning that both free trade and fair trade must be realized to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Putting these two concepts together in the same beaker may be more difficult than combining the concepts of private trade and public aid. Rav provides an example by pointing out that the UN report is at odds with the Commission for Africa, whose own report emphasized poor countries' right to protect their economies (pdf). I won't deny the need for poor countries to protect their economies, which is one of the premises of fair trade, the challenge will be in creating the correct balance, the argument will be on where the point of balance is.

Abolish agricultural subsidies. They are both expensive and harm poor countries by making exports from rich countries cheaper than goods grown at home! (p46). Rich countries are being neither fair nor free in their practice. For the first I will turn to to this Stigliz article from the Ghana Graphic Online and for the second to my favorite Libertarian-light economist Tyler Cowen – Kill the Farm Bill.

Manufactured goods made in poor countries when exported to rich countries face crippling import tariffs that make them too expensive to succeed. Because rich countries have agreed various free-trade initiatives through groupings like the EU, many place higher tariffs on goods from poor countries than on goods from other rich countries.

Barriers placed by developing countries are meant to prevent goods flowing in from rich countries, also act as trade barriers between fellow poor countries - preventing, for example, trade between neighboring African states, which could both help those economies grow, but also help reduce conflict between African states. The UN report calls for a quick reduction to zero of tariffs on imports of nonagricultural goods proposing a deadline of 2025 for the removal of their barriers for developing countries and 2015 for rich countries. (p46-7). Meaning that there is a ten (10) year gap before fair trade and free trade are effectively blended together. Prior to that time they are likely to be an admixture of competing policies and philosophies.

Rav also looks at free trade in services being a controversial idea, "with many arguing that poor countries could be forced to sell off their remaining public services and to remove regulations on things like banking to fulfill the requirements of the World Trade Organization's GATS initiative". UNESCO has raised the issue of education, university quality and mobility in the past. The GATS initiative is another example of a practice I need to learn more about where developing countries struggle with their own economic engines, but developing countries get to write the owner's manual. I am not saying it is necessarily wrong just needs to be studied more. More on that and other issues raised by Rav in another post.

Millennium Promises Fulfilled By All Skills

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One of the objectives of this blog is to discover and post about different ways people can help with the Millennium Development Goals. Not everyone has to be a doctor in Nigeria, an engineer in Bolivia or an activist in New York. As this blog has shown, people who are accountants can use their skills to make the world a better place.

It does seem to take getting involved in something bigger than yourself. Something that follows principles you can believe in and implements those principles on a global stage.

One organization that does that is UNESCO. One organization helping to make a difference is Felissimo Design House.

The Millennium Promise Competition Winners via graphic:DESIGN:basics updates by no. 2 pencil on 7/15/08

"HELP!" by Lana Sef. DESIGN 21: Social Design Network, a joint-venture project founded by Felissimo and UNESCO to inspire and promote design for the greater good, is proud to announce the results of its Millennium Promise competition. The latest in a series of thought-provoking online competitions, designers of all disciplines were invited to develop a [...]

diigo tags: felissimo, design, mdg, mdgs