By Prashant K. Nanda, IANS
New Delhi : Education ministers of 14 Asian countries will be in the Indian capital to participate in the Global Literacy Conference next week and promote literacy, especially among women.
The two-day global meet beginning Nov 29 is being organised by India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) and Unesco.
According to Unesco, the ministers of education and finance of 14 countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan will be part of the conference.
“The Delhi conference is important for the Indian subcontinent because three highly populated nations, namely, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, continue to face major literacy challenges, including the sheer number of illiterates,” a Unesco official said.
“In addition to a serious gender gap, there is high urban-rural disparity. As a key instrument for lifelong learning, indispensable for effective participation in social and economic life and essential for peace, literacy is a crucial issue in the region.”
The UN body said the countries of South and Southwest Asia have the highest number of illiterates in the world, and “out of the 388 million adults in this region who cannot read and write 63.5 percent are women”.
The conference in Delhi is part of a series of regional conferences being organised as a follow-up of the White House Conference on Global Literacy held in September 2006.
The Delhi conference is the fourth in the series of six regional conferences covering Arab states, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean as part of a major drive to promote literacy at national and international levels, the education and cultural body of the UN said.
The last three conferences held this year were in Qatar, China and Mali.
The conference aims to foster partnerships among the key stakeholders like decision-makers, civil society organisations, community-based organisations, bilateral and multilateral organisations and private providers in the field of literacy.