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| Gordon Brown in Maputo/David Fish/ActionAid | Nelson Mandela greets GCE campaigners/David Fish/ActionAid | Paul Weinberg / Oxfam / South Africa |
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Past Issues - May 2007 Note: Most hyperlinks will open in a new window. Please close the new window in order to be automatically returned to the GCE site. GCE, ANCEFA AND GNECC ASK AFRICAN FINANCE MINISTERS TO REMEMBER EDUCATION The Africa Network Campaign on Education For All (ANCEFA) led GCE's campaigning with the help of Ghana's National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC) at the Financing for Development Conference of African Finance Ministers, May 30-31 st in Accra. Although the theme of energy took centre stage at this meeting, education was still a hot topic. Erich Stather State Secretary at the German Development Ministry opened the session on progress on Gleneagles by promising that Germany would fulfil its aid commitments. This is good news considering the G8 is only days away! Honourable Minister of Finance of Ghana, Mr. Baah-Wiredu gave a summary of progress since the Abuja meeting in Nigeria last year and called on donors to give their fair share for education. Only the Minister of Education of Ghana was able to give a review of his ministry's 10 year plan. ANCEFA welcomed the attempt to review the progress on "10 year costed education plans ", a commitment made by African Finance Ministers at Abuja last year. However, as energy took the limelight at this conference, another opportunity to review the quality of all the 10 year costed plans is needed. It is clear that more homework is required from both African Finance and rich country Finance Ministers. 1st June AHEAD OF G8 CHILDREN 'MOVE THE WORLD' IN BERLIN AND DEMAND EDUCATION FOR ALL. Over 100 children joined hands in solidarity and moved the world through Berlin's famous Brandenburg Gate in demand that the G8 take steps to make sure that money be made available so that everyone can have an education. Campaigners carried on the theme of people & human chains and pushed a huge inflatable globe along the chain to symbolise children 'moving the world'. Thousands of paper chains were delivered from other countries asking Merkel for more action. The event was a huge success attended by Reuters TV, APTV, DPA Radio and other media outlets. Click to view photos 30th May VERDICT FROM GCE'S PRESIDENT, KAILASH SATYARTHI ON 'KEEPING OUR PROMISES' CONFERENCE Once again the world's richest nations have failed the world's poorest and neediest children. The ministers came with their notebooks, not their chequebooks. Initial analysis indicates that the new money announced today will be enough to get less than 1 million children into school, a tiny fraction of the global total. The eighty million children missing an education were promised they would get the chance to go to school, all they have learnt today is that rich countries break their promises. The very richest countries should be embarrassed about their continuing failure to deliver aid to basic education – particularly key G8 members like the US, Germany and Japan. Millions of children will continue to be denied the chance to go to school because these countries refuse to pay their fair share. It should be a source of embarrassment to the governments in Washington, Tokyo and Berlin that they are performing less well on aiding basic education than smaller countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium. It is vital that the political leaders do not disappear for another 5 years –they must attend the annual High Level Group meetings on education from now on. Donors must also address the full Education for All agenda, not just universal primary education. The time for warm words is over. The time for action is now. 16th May NOT UP TO SCRATCH! NEW REPORT SLATES WORLD LEADERS' PERFORMANCE IN FUNDING EDUCATION ON EVE OF CRUCIAL DONOR CONFERENCE Today the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) released a damning report showing a significant fall in rich country aid to funding basic education in the poor world. On the eve of an exceptional high-level event, the report shows that the US, Japan, Germany and Italy are the most miserly of the rich countries, collectively giving just 10% of what is needed to keep their own promises of every person having the chance of an education by 2015. Co-convened by Louis Michel, Gordon Brown and Paul Wolfowitz the 'Keeping Our Promises on Education' is the first donor conference on education in five years. It is a crucial opportunity for world leaders to secure the breakthrough needed to keep the promises on basic education, but activists are concerned that their recent record shows they do anything but. 'Not up to Scratch,' is the title of GCE's 2007 annual 'School Report' which gives an assessmentand ranking of the 22 world's richest OECD countries, and holds them to account for their promises on aid for education. George Bush, President of the wealthiest country in the world comes a shocking 20th in the class, followed only by Greece and Austria who trail at the very bottom of the class. Germany's Angela Merkel, current 'class captain' of the EU and G8 will need to significantly pull up her aid socks and find the additional $472 million needed each year to fulfill her promise. Currently leading the G8 on aid for education, the UK comes fourth in the class overall, with a B average. Top of the class is the Netherlands and Norway. According to the report, aid to basic education is less than a third of the amount required to achieve even the minimal target of getting all children into school. Reaching $9 billion annually would at least give the 80 million children currently denied an education, the chance to go to primary school. And a bigger challenge is on the horizon; none of the G8 nations is anywhere near giving its fair share of the total $16 billion needed per year to reach their own Education for All (EFA) goals which include tackling adult literacy and pre-school education, and to help orphans and vulnerable children. "Giving only 39% of her fair share to basic education is simply not good enough for this important nation. Angela Merkel needs to show better leadership if she's to encourage her G8 and EU classmates to make the team effort needed. If the G8 leaders pulled their finger out, kept their promise and provided $5 billion, this would enable 75% of all out of school children to go to school. Seven countries could make that happen. That same amount is what is spent in 5 weeks on subsidizing farmers in Europe via the EU Common Agriculture Policy." Kailash Satyarthi (President of GCE) Attendees of the conference on education in Brussels on 2 May will be left in no doubt of the GCE's seriousness of intent. Former child slave, Freeman Gadri from Ghana, will open the conference on education with a personal testimony of how education liberated him from a life of slavery and ignorance. Taken from his mother at the age of 6, Freeman spent most his childhood working for a fisherman until, when free schooling was introduced in Ghana, he was rescued, reunited with his mother and started school for the first time. His and other testimonies of child labourers from India and Colombia will bring the message to the heart of the conference. Imagine what a different world we would live in if all children could complete school; if the millions or children currently left waiting at the school gates, were taught and inspired by teachers that fed their dreams and nurtured their intelligence. We could give young people this chance. The chance to take part in democracy, to protect their family from illness, to communicate in times of conflict, to be future citizens of the world and lead the world out of extreme poverty. Rasheda Choudhury
(GCE Board member and Director, Campaign for Popular Education, Bangladesh) Download the 2007 School Report:
1st May Click to view Past
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