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Press Release

Girls' Education Forum at the Millennium Summit

"The most urgent priority is to ensure access to, and improve the quality of, education for girls and women, and to remove every obstacle that hampers their active participation."
World Declaration on Education for All:
Meeting basic learning needs, Jomtien (Thailand) 1990

Tuesday, 5 September 2000: Approximately 110 million children of primary school age are not in school -- and two thirds of these children are girls. Girls miss out on education, or learn poorly, for many reasons. These include poverty, work, discrimination, lack of safety and security in school and irrelevant or poorly taught curricula.

Now, with the historic Millennium Summit taking place at the United Nations 6 to 8 September 2000, the world community has a unique opportunity to address many of these problems and renew its commitment to girls' education.

In his Millennium Report, We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has proposed that leaders attending the Summit commit themselves to bold actions to promote education for girls as part of several key goals for improving children's lives. He urges leaders to reduce the gender gap by the year 2005, and to ensure by 2015 that all children, regardless of gender, have secured their right to complete quality basic education.

About the meeting
On 7 September, some 70 spouses of Heads of State and Government attending the Millennium Summit will gather at the Girls' Education Forum to discuss impediments to girls' education and ways to inspire greater action at the highest levels to overcome them. The focus is on two key problems that keep girls out of school: lack of safety and security, and girls' work.

The meeting is hosted by Mrs. Nane Annan, wife of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and features talks by Dr. Penina Mlama, Executive Director of the Nairobi-based Forum for African Women Educationalists, and UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy, who will also moderate a discussion.

Girls education and the United Nations
The United Nations has long recognized that securing the right of every child to a quality basic education is the most important long-term investment society can make. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sees girls' education as key to progress and development. He is committed to re-igniting the passion and promise expressed by world leaders at the 1990 Education for All summit meeting in Jomtien, Thailand. At that summit, girls' education took its rightful place at the top of the world' action agenda.

In April 2000, Mr. Annan launched a UN Girls' Education Initiative at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal. UNICEF has a lead role in support of the Initiative.

A UNICEF priority
Girls' education is a longstanding priority for UNICEF. Its Global Girls' Education Programme, for example, works towards achieving this goal in more than 60 countries where there is a large gap in school enrolment between girls and boys.

Sites and resources
For more information about girls' education policies and programmes supported by UNICEF and other United Nations organizations, consult the following:

Education for all: No excuses (booklet produced by UNICEF)

Educating girls: Transforming the future (short brochure produced by UNICEF)

World Education Forum Web site (UNESCO)

World Education Forum: Dakar 2000 (UNICEF)

Teachers Talking About Learning (UNICEF)

The State of the World's Children 1999 (UNICEF report focusing on education)

Convention on the Rights of the Child (pamphlet produced by UNICEF)

Convention on the Rights of the Child (full text and detailed supplementary information)

United Nations Web site