United Nations Launches Literacy Decade

Despite impressive advances in worldwide literacy over the past 50 years, an estimated 861 million people, or 20 percent of the world's adults, still cannot read or write or participate fully in their societies, according to the latest UNESCO statistics. Two thirds of these people are women. Another 113 million children are not in school and are therefore not gaining access to literacy skills. With this in mind, the United Nations launched the Literacy Decade (2003-2012) at UN Headquarters in New York on February 13. The theme for the decade is "Literacy as Freedom."

Certainly, much progress has been made since the first survey of worldwide literacy rates, published in the 1950s, found 44 percent of the world's adult population to be illiterate. Still, there is a long way to go to achieve the goal set at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000--to halve adult illiteracy by 2015. If progress is not accelerated, UNESCO estimates that 15 percent of the world's adults (or 800 million people) will still be illiterate by that date.

Sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia, and the Arab States and North Africa account for more than 70 percent of the world's illiterate adults (615 million). Another 185 million live in the countries of East Asia and the Pacific. Another 39 million live in Latin America and the Caribbean. The remainder are spread throughout the rest of the world.

Illiteracy, however, is not just a problem for the developing world. In the mid-1990s, the International Adult Literacy Survey compared literacy skills in 12 industrialized countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States). This survey found that at least 25 percent of adults in these countries failed to reach the minimum level of literacy proficiency considered necessary for coping with the demands of everyday life and work in the member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

"This situation is unacceptable and underlines the need for greater islet efforts," said UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura in a message to mark the launch of the Literacy Decade. He stressed that the decade should not be seen as a stand-alone initiative, but rather as an integral part of the worldwide drive to achieve Education for All (EFA) and the development agenda for the new century.

In his message, Matsuura emphasized that priority for the Literacy Decade will be given to the most disadvantaged groups, especially women and girls, ethnic and linguistic minorities, indigenous populations, migrants and refugees, out-of-school children and youth, and persons with disabilities.

UNESCO, as the coordinating agency for the decade, has prepared an international plan of action proposing six lines of action:

• policy change
• the development of flexible programs to suit people's different needs
• capacity-building to reinforce the professional corps working in literacy
• research to better understand the problems and how they can be dealt with
• community participation monitoring and evaluation to measure progress

One of UNESCO's showcase projects for the Literacy Decade is the recently launched LAND-Afghan project, which will tackle illiteracy in Afghanistan. Another major undertaking by UNESCO's Montreal-based Institute for Statistics will be the Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Program (LAMP), a worldwide survey to measure a spectrum of literacy levels.

As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said during the February 13 ceremony, "We are here because we know that literacy is the key to unlocking the cage of human misery; the key to delivering the potential of every human being; the key to opening up a future of freedom and hope. We are here to open a decade that must translate that hope into reality."

The International Reading Association cooperates with UNESCO in a variety of ways, including sponsoring the IRA Literacy Award, presented by UNESCO each year on International Literacy Day to honor outstanding literacy work. This year marks the 25th anniversary for the IRA award; watch upcoming issues of Reading Today for an article commemorating this landmark.