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Past Issues - June 2004 Note: Most hyperlinks will open in a new window. Please close the new window in order to be automatically returned to the GCE site. FT: EDUCATION COULD BE AMERICA’S BEST DEFENSE http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/Page/ GenericPage&c=Page &cid=1012571727285&p=1012571727126 America's current strategy for supporting education in poor nations is inadequate and fundamentally reactive, writes US GCE Chairperson Gene Sperling in the Financial Times. The total annual US contribution to education in poor countries would not be enough to build 20 American high schools. The only time the US has taken bold steps on education has been after it has invaded or bombed countries - such as the effort to get girls in Kabul into school for the first time - or has identified a security threat - as in Pakistan, where weak public school funding provided an opening for fundamentalist Islamic schools. 22 June URGENT ACTION: CHILDREN AND TEACHERS ABDUCTED IN NEPAL Since Jan 2004, hundreds of children and their teachers have been abducted in the west of Nepal, either to be enlisted for Maoist training, enslaved in labour camps, or used as human shields in battles with government security forces. Mr Prem Singh Vohra, Deputy General Secretary of the Nepal Trade Union Congress and principal of the Mahakali Secondary School was abducted on 3 June 2004. Please support EI’s urgent action appeal by writing to the Nepalese Prime Minister, Mr. Sher Bahadur Deuba (email: info@pmo.gov.np), demanding protection for Nepalese teachers and children. Read EI’s Urgent Action Appeal in full: http://www.ei-ie.org/action/english/UAA/20040616_vanleeuwen_UAA%20for%20Nepal_e.pdf 17 June 2004 SATYARTHI VOWS HUNGER STRIKE UNTIL CIRCUS CHILDREN RELEASED Lucknow, India - Recovering from a brutal attack on him when he attempted to free child labourers from a traveling circus, GCE Chairperson Kailash Satyarthi vowed yesterday to go on indefinite hunger strike if the children are not released within the next 24 hours. After strong protest from Satyarthi's rescue team the circus owner was arrested and a case charged against him. About 15 of the circus children were released yesterday to local authorities in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, but the authorities handed them back to the circus shortly after. It is expected that one girl will be released by tonight. She has reported to the authorities that she had been sexually abused in the circus. The Global Campaign for Education is deeply concerned about the condition of the children who are still trapped in bondage at the circus. We join Global March Against Child Labour and Bachpan Bachao Andolan/South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude in demanding immediate penal action against the circus owner and the government officials and a probe into the conditions of children working in circuses in India with particular reference to Uttar Pradesh. 17 June 2004 See photos... BRUTAL ATTACK ON GCE CHAIR SATYARTHI Eminent child labour activist and Chairperson of Global Campaign for Education and Global March Against Child Labour Kailash Satyarthi, who was leading a raid to free child labourers in Uttar Pradesh, was brutally attacked yesterday. Satyarthi was acting on complaints of 11 parents, who reported that hundreds of children were being exploited and abused by the owners of a travelling circus. Accompanied by 4 of the parents, Satyarthi approached the district administration which sent the Sub Divisional Magistrate to conduct a raid on the circus camp. However when the raid started, the circus owner threatened Satyarthi with a pistol while his henchmen started attacking the team. Satyarthi sustained serious head injuries and leg fractures. Satyarthi’s son and several others sustained serious injuries. Government officials and police stood by and did nothing to stop the attack, said Alok Vajpeyi of Global March. Satyarthi is now in recovering in hospital. The attack, some of which captured on film by a TV journalist, has been headline news across India. Several of the children whom the team had gone to rescue are still stuck in the circus, Vajpeyi added. Many parents are also in captivity, he said. The GCE joins Global March in demanding that the government of UP should immediately release all the children and parents kept in captivity. The Government should immediately arrest the culprits. For more information contact Alok Vajpeyi: alokvajpeyi@globalmarch.org 15 June 2004 IMF PUSHING ZAMBIA OVER THE BRINK – UN ENVOY As the IMF Board meets to consider debt relief for Zambia, a senior UN spokesperson has charged that IMF policies are crippling the country’s ability to cope with the raging AIDS epidemic. "The damage to the social sectors is staggering," said Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa. "The Ministry of Health can hire no more staff, and fully twenty per cent of the municipal districts have no doctors and no nurses. There is a shortfall of 10,000 teachers, and there are 9,000 newly-trained teachers who cannot be hired. Average pupil-teacher ratio is approaching 56:1." Pointing to the possibility of social unrest, Lewis called on the IMF not to delay HIPC completion point any longer, and to "give Zambia some breathing room" by easing macroeconomic constraints. Zambian civil society has strongly backed Lewis’s call. “We demand that the IMF should take one step at a time and start by fulfilling its promise as laid out in its claims to be become more pro-poor,” said Joe Makano, Executive Director of the Zambia National Education Coalition (ZANEC). “Education is one of the most potent weapons available to Zambians to tackle the multiple scourges of social dislocation, poverty, conflict and marginalisation, and to achieve this country as well as the continent’s human development goals,” Makano added. “We call upon the IMF at all levels to show it is able to set the right priorities in economic policy advice for Zambia. As CSOs and Zambians we feel the need to be included in the Goverment- IMF negotiations at all times. By so doing then we will be able to establish who is behind the unemployment of the 9,000 teachers in Zambia." ZANEC, a civil society advocacy network on EFA established in May 2001, is a member of ANCEFA and the GCE. Read Stephen Lewis's statement in full... Read WDM's report: "Zambia: Condemned to Debt" 14 June 2004 G8 ANNOUNCES STOPGAP FOR HIPC DEBT INITIATIVE Last week’s G8 summit on Sea Island, Georgia ended without real help for Africa or for children, said GCE member agencies on Friday. The rich country leaders extended by another 2 years the deadline for poor countries to apply for HIPC debt relief, and gave finance ministers the go-ahead to cost proposals for full bilateral debt cancellation. But Oxfam said the announcement was “only a stopgap measure and won’t do enough to lighten the burden on poor countries.” African NGOs and trade unions, in a statement issued by MWENGO, said “The HIPC initiative is not deep or fast enough, leading to the State failing to provide basic social services – a clear violation of human rights.” Eveline Herfkens of the UN Millennium Campaign, David Morrission of NetAid and Peter Bell of CARE drew attention to the rich countries’ paltry record on aid for basic education, reminding the G8 that education is critical to global security because “peace begins in the mind of men.” Save the Children UK said the G8 was failing to fund concrete measures to help the world’s poor children. 11 June 2004 Read G8 communique in full http://g8usa.gov Oxfam statement http://www.oxfam.org/eng/pr040610_G8_final.htm MWENGO statement http://www.sarpn.org.za/newsflash.php#1531 NetAid and CARE event http://www.netaid.org/campaigns/mdg/g8_2004.pt SCF statement http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/scuk/jsp/resources/details.jsp?id=2052&group =resources§ion=news&subsection=details&pagelang=en NO PEACE WITHOUT EDUCATION, US GCE MEMBERS TELL G8 http://www.netaid.org/campaigns/mdg/g8_2004.pt In an event celebrating the GCE Action Week in Savannah, Georgia today, US GCE members including NetAid and CARE sent a powerful message to the G8, whose meeting on Sea Island this week will focus on global conflict and instability. Sustainable human security, they said, must start with universal access to education. “Developed countries need to give $5.6 billion more to make education a reality for all children—this is just slightly more than what the U.S. spends each month on war and occupation of Iraq,” said David Morrison, president of NetAid. “The world’s richest countries have never been richer. But their efforts in terms of giving aid to poor countries are, in terms of percentages of national wealth, less than they were decades ago,” agreed Eveline Herfkens, head of the UN’s Millennium Campaign. Speaking as a member of the U.S. government, Rep. James McGovern told the audience that education is at the core of American values and ideals. A strong and vocal advocate of universal school feeding programs, McGovern made the case for education’s power to transform the world. “I call on the leaders of the G8 nations, and especially my own president, to make it happen,” said McGovern. Local students stole the spotlight when they presented letters from children who participated in the GCE Global Action Week, calling on world leaders to take action to ensure Education for All. Kaki Blackburn, 15, and Brandy Chaney, 13, told G8 leaders, “We are here because no child should miss out on an education. Something must be done.” For more information, please contact Joy Portella, Director of Communications, at 212.537.0518 and at jportella@netaid.org. 7 June 2004 NAIROBI: UNAFFORDABLE LEVIES Nairobi: Head teachers and school boards are imposing unaffordable levies at “dictatorial, undemocratic and stage-managed” PTA meetings, says a Kenyan think-tank. In the name of community participation, parents are made to pay for irrelevant projects such as building a school administration block – when the school already has one. “It seems headmasters own schools and do what they want,” said one parent interviewed by the Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR). IPAR blames the Kenyan government for giving secondary school head teachers scope to decide on extra charges, above and beyond the official fee structure for government secondary schools. Poor children are being locked out of schools, says IPAR, as the fees are imposed regardless of ability to pay. Less than 30% of the children who finish primary school carry on to secondary level. IPAR’s research also shows that government’s bursary system is not an effective way to help the poor tackle the high cost of secondary school education. Bursary allocations are now decided by local committees that include MPs. Some MPs have been accused of monopolizing the funds for children of their supporters, while others gave bursaries to all who applied, regardless of need. But the previous system – allowing head teachers to choose recipients - was not popular either, according to Kenya’s East African Standard. Source: East African Standard 3 June 2004 INDIA'S GOVERNMENT DOUBLES EDUCATION SPENDING In a victory for civil society campaigners, India's newly elected government has announced it will more than double public spending on education to 6% of GDP. The move will benefit close to 35 million Indian children who are still out of school despite a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to free education. The spending increases are to be financed through tax increases. Suman, convenor of India's National Coalition on Education (a GCE member), said NCE and other civil society networks have been campaigning for eight years for universal education and 6% of GDP to go to the education budget. "This is a major feather in our caps," she said. "Our interventions were at two levels," said Suman. On the one hand, mass mobilisations like the Shiksha Yatra (India-wide march for education) and the GCE Action Week "aroused a will in the people for education," she said. This was followed up with systematic lobbying and advocacy. Forming a Parliamentary Forum on Education was an important step for NCE as it helped civil society to get the need for more spending raised again and again in both the houses of Parliament. The Congress-led government will also set up a National Commission for Education to allocate resources and monitor programmes, meeting another key civil society demand. For more information contact Suman (advocacy@bbasaccs.org) 1 June 2004 JOBS, OPPORTUNITIES AND EVENTS CONSULTANCY OPPORTUNITY ActionAid is looking for a consultant to facilitate a 12 week online discussion and review of the reports prepared by the UN Taskforce on the education and gender Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Can you frame provocative questions and provide incisive summaries to keep the online debate on track and energised? Deadline 17th May and must be able to start immediately. Please contact David Archer - darcher@actionaid.org.uk. ©2004 GCE You are welcome to reproduce items from the GCE E-News for any non-profit use, as long as you credit GCE together with any original source mentioned in the article. |
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