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International Literacy Day, 8 September 2011

"UNESCO urges to bring real peace through literacy not through arms"

Islamabad: 8th Sep, 2011: Pakistan is one of the 21 developing countries of the world which currently spends more on military budgets than on primary education. Only 10% of the military spending if spent on education can educate 9.5 million illiterate boys and girls in the country.
These facts were part of discussion during the seminar organized on the occasion of “International Literacy Day”, an international UNESCO day, to commemorate the importance of peace and status of literacy, in Islamabad today, in collaboration with Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD).

"Literacy is a foundation of all learning and an inclusive knowledge society; which grows and develops with embedded values for democracy, reconciliation and peace", these remarks were given by Director UNESCO, Dr. Kozue Kay Nagata. "While we are committed for education for all as human right, we also want to take this occasion to highlight the important and inter dependence of peace and literacy to one another, these two values go hand in hand, and only an literate society can have a harmonious peaceful inclusive value system where people can practice their beliefs and ideas freely and democratically", Dr. Nagata further added.

Federal Minister for Human Rights, Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar said, "Pakistan is one of the very few Muslim countries, which was one of the first ones to recognize Article 26 of Universal Declaration of Human rights in 1948, unlike many Muslim countries; thus we had a great potential to carry forward our sensitivity to basic rights to humanity, unfortunately which now lags behind”. He further added that belonging to younger generation, we need to get united for one cause to move forward to take Pakistan to back to the dream of founding fathers".

"It is very encouraging that the reforms in article 25-A in constitution are introduced and while UNESCO is enthusiastically working for educating every child by 2015 in Pakistan, it’s crucial to increase the education budget in this country to really meet the goals of this reform", expressed by Arshad Saeed Khan, National Education Specialist, UNESCO Islamabad.
Pakistan is one the lower literacy rates in the world, with less than 50% of population (including urban, rural, men and women) being literate in 57 districts of the country. With annual growth rate of literacy in Pakistan is about only 2 %, this means Pakistan will not be able to achieve Millennium Development Goals and Education For All by 2015.

 DG's Message on International Literacy Day
 Seminar on Literacy for Peace
 Literacy Walk
 AIOU Seminar
 Event in Islamabad |  Peshawar |  Lahore |  Karachi
 Event in Hafizabad |  Rahim Yar Khan & Muzaffargarh