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Global March
and its members will remind governments
of their commitments towards the Education
For All and UN Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) during the Global Action Week, 24-30
April, 2005. The theme of this week is "Educate
to End Poverty". Young people and education
activists in more than 100 countries will
join together this week to protest world
leaders' failure to meet a major UN target
on girls' education this year – a failure
they say will lead to greater poverty and
unnecessary child deaths.
This will
be the fifth annual Global Action Week in
the Global March, together with its partners
in the Global Campaign for Education, will
support millions of children around the
world, who are not in school currently,
in demanding their right to education.
Five years
ago, governments of the world promised to
get equal numbers of girls as boys into
school by 2005. The target – the first of
all the UN's Millennium Development Goals
to fall due - will be missed, and experts
believe that a second Millennium target
for giving every child a quality primary
education is also at risk.
As part
of the Global Campaign for Education's (GCE)
‘Send my Friend to School' campaign from
April 24-30, children will be presenting
politicians, cabinet ministers and even
heads of state with colourful cardboard
cut-outs, or “friends”, each of which represents
one of the more than 100 million children
out of school. A million cut-out ‘friends',
collected from around the world, will be
delivered to G8 leaders at the G8 Summit
in Scotland in July. From April 24, members
of the public can also make an online ‘friend'
at: www.sendmyfriend.info.
“Girls'
education is the key to ending world poverty.
2005 marks the year that world leaders have
broken their promise to get equal numbers
of girls and boys into school. I support
the Global Campaign for Education's call
to educate girls to end poverty and call
on world leaders to respond to calls from
children around the world to 'send my friend
to school” said Graca Machel, human rights
activist and wife of Nelson Mandela, while
making her own ‘friend' as part of the campaign.
Mr Mandela
delivered his own rallying cry to young
people around the world when he met children
involved in the Send my Friend to School
campaign: “Sometimes it falls upon a generation
to be great. You can be that great generation.”
Children from all corners of the world will
be rising to the challenge set by Mr Mandela
and showing their solidarity with the more
than 100 million children around the world
and 860 million illiterate adults who have
been denied their fundamental right to learning,
most of whom are girls and women.
UNESCO
estimates that $7.1 billion per year is
required in aid to achieve universal primary
education in 79 low-income countries. However,
aid to basic education has increased only
modestly since 2000, barely reaching $1.7bn
in 2003. “Without a firm long-term pledge
of dramatically increased resources, very
poor countries simply cannot afford to take
additional steps to reach the 2015 education
goals,” says a recent 45-page GCE report
detailing the contribution of a few rich
countries towards necessary aid for education.
Kailash
Satyarthi, GCE chairperson, said: “Enabling
girls to attend school is literally a matter
of life and death. Education, especially
for girls and women, is the best way to
break the cycle of ill health, hunger and
poverty. Without it we can't achieve the
Millennium Development Goals. World Bank
research shows that this year alone, one
million additional children will die
unnecessarily, because governments failed
to meet the 2005 target for girls' education.”
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