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The United Nations reports that:

"Nearly a billion people will enter the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names - much less operate a computer or understand a simple application form. And they will live, as now, in more desperate poverty and poorer health than most of those who can. They are the world's functional illiterates - and their numbers are growing... Girls crowd these ranks disproportionately, representing nearly two of every three children in the developing world who do not receive a primary education (approximately 73 million of the 130 million out-of-school children)." (full report below)

Every year we spend $80 billion on education

We only need $7 billion more...
We only need about $7 billion more dollars per year for six years - less than Europeans spend on ice cream or Americans spend on cosmetics - so that by the year 2010, all of the children of the world can have primary schooling.

Investing in Education
Additional annual expenses required

Annual amount spent by Europe on ice cream: $11 billion

Source: Enrique Delamonica, Santosh Mehrotra, and Jan Vandemoortele; Universalizing Primary Education: How Much Will it Cost? UNICEF staff working papers series (Unpublished)

...did you know?

The Right To Education

From UNICEF's The State of the World's Children 1999

Nearly a billion people will enter the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names - much less operate a computer or understand a simple application form. And they will live, as now, in more desperate poverty and poorer health than most of those who can. They are the world's functional illiterates - and their numbers are growing.(1)

An estimated 855 million people - nearly one sixth of humanity - will be functionally illiterate on the eve of the millennium.(2) At the same time, over 130 million children of school age in the developing world are growing up without access to basic education (3), while millions of others languish in sub-standard learning situations where little learning takes place. Girls crowd these ranks disproportionately, representing nearly two of every three children in the developing world who do not receive a primary education (approximately 73 million of the 130 million out-of-school children).(4)

Ensuring the right of education is a matter of morality, justice and economic sense. There is an unmistakable correlation between education and mortality rates, especially child mortality. The implications for girls' education are particularly critical. A 10 percentage point increase in girls' primary enrollment can be expected to decrease infant mortality by 4.1 deaths per 1,000 and a similar rise in girls' secondary enrollment by another 5.6 deaths per 1,000.(5)

The broad social benefits of educating girls are almost universally acknowledged. They include the following:

• The more educated a mother is, the more the infant and child mortality is reduced
• Children of more educated mothers tend to be better nourished and suffer less from illness
• Children (and particularly daughters) of more educated mothers are more likely to become educated themselves and become literate.
• The more years of education women have, the later they tend to marry and the fewer children they tend to have.
• Educated women are less likely to die in childbirth
• The more educated a woman is, the more likely she is to have opportunities and life choices and avoid being oppressed and exploited by her family and social situation.
• Educated women are more likely to be receptive to, participate in and influence development initiatives and send their own daughters to school.
• Educated women are more likely to play a role in political and economic decision-making at community, regional and national levels.

The value of investing in basic education, and especially the education of girls, is now almost universally accepted. Why then has the international community not rushed to embrace this most cherished project - an avenue that promises more than any other to reach the goal of delivering 'human development' worldwide?

The answer is familiar: The political will is lacking. When the international community decides that an idea or projects is of urgent importance, it can move mountains. Nothing made this plainer than the economic crisis in East Asia in 1997-1998. The financial collapse first of Thailand, then the Republic of Korea, and then Indonesia (counted among the financial 'tigers' of Asia) proved such a shock to the international financial system that the OECD countries led by the group of Seven responded with admirable urgency. In the space of a few short months, they mobilized over $100 billion to bolster the collapsing Asian economies, to be distributed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in return for sweeping structural adjustment programs similar to those that poorer countries have been undergoing for the last 15 years. Recognizing that the crisis was so grave they could not afford to observe normal administrative procedures, donor nations bent IMF rules to accommodate the suffering 'tigers'.
In contrast, the leading industrial nations, IMF and the World Bank have been less accommodating with the world's poorest and most-indebted countries, something that has not gone unnoticed. It cast a heavy shadow over events in the Cote d'Ivoire capital of Abidjan in February 1998, when a new structural-adjustment agreement was reached after nine months of painful negotiation, with the Government agreeing to privatization measures in return for $2 billion in new loans from the IMF. This agreement followed almost two decades of economic belt-tightening. As N'Goran Niamen, Cote d'Ivoire's Economic and Finance Minister commented:

"We have observed the speedy reaction to Asia and seen the huge sums of money
they have been able to come up with almost instantaneously, often bending the rules pretty freely. When it comes to us, our negotiations can drag on for months while they split hairs and act very finicky. One can easily get the impression of a double standard.(6)"

_______________________________
(1) UNESCO, World Education Report 1998,
UNESCO, Paris, 1998, table 2, p. 105; and
UNICEF Facts and Figures 1998, UNICEF, New York, 1998.

(2) UNICEF, Facts and Figures 1998, UNICEF, New York, 1998.

(3) ibid.

(4) ibid.

(5) These results - obtained from a regression analysis of data in over 90 countries - represent the marginal effects of education after taking into account the impact of GNP levels and other factors, such as the population/physician ratio and the percentage of population with safe drinking water.
Hill, M. Anne, and Elizabeth M. King,
'Women's Education and Economic Well-being', Feminist Economics, Vol. 1, No.2,
London: Routledge Journals, 1995.

(6) French, Howard W. 'Africans Resentful as Asia raqes in Aid.'
The New York Times, 8 March 1998.