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Education
for All Week
6 - 13 April 2003
All for Girls Education
!
Message
by the Secretary-General of the United Nations for "The
World's Biggest Lesson"
Held during the Global Action Week of the
Global Campaign for Education
9
April 2003
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To
educate girls is to reduce poverty. That is the lesson that unites
us today.
We
come to this lesson well-prepared. Study after study has taught
us that there is no tool for development more effective than the
education of girls. No other policy is as likely to raise economic
productivity, lower infant and maternal mortality, improve nutrition
and promote health -- including the prevention of HIV/AIDS. No other
policy is as powerful in increasing the chances of education for
the next generation.
And yet, out of the millions of children in the world who are not
in school, the majority are girls.
That is why we must redouble our efforts to translate what we know
into reality. That is why two of the Millennium Development Goals
agreed by all the world's countries are focused on education for
girls and boys alike. These are not only goals in their own right;
how we fare in reaching them will be crucial to our ability to reach
all the others.
Education is a human right. Fifty-five years ago, the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights established that everyone has the right
to education. The fact that millions are still deprived of it --
most of them girls -- should fill us all with shame.
If we are to succeed in our efforts to build a more healthy, peaceful
and equitable world, the classrooms of the world have to be full
of girls as well as boys. Every year of schooling completed by them
will be a step towards eradicating poverty and disease.
Let this be not only the world's biggest ever lesson, but a lesson
that the world will never forget.
Kofi
A. Annan
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