Community Aid Abroad
ACTION ALERT - EDUCATION FOR ALL
Issued: 28 March 2000
Please take action before 12 April 2000.
Help ensure the world's governments take action and provide all of the
world's children with access to good quality basic education.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ten years ago, at the World Conference on Education for All, governments
from 155 countries including Australia promised to provide all of
the world's children with access to good quality basic education by
2000.
That promise has now been broken. Right now more than 125 million school
age children have never seen a school classroom. Two thirds of them are
girls. Millions more children drop out of school in the early grades
unable to read or write - and the numbers are growing - 880 million
people around the world are illiterate.
What's more, the goal posts have been shifted, with the international
community now promising to achieve education for all by 2015.
Addressing how to achieve education for all by 2015 will be the focus of
a crucial United Nations' Education for All Conference in Dakar, Senegal
this coming April. Without real political commitment from Governments
represented at the Dakar Conference, there is a real danger of yet more
hollow promises and no action.
Together with our Oxfam International colleagues, Community Aid Abroad
has developed a Global Action Plan (GAP) for Basic Education which
outlines how Governments at the Dakar conference can achieve universal
basic education by 2015.
This Action Alert asks you to write to Foreign Affairs Minister
Alexander Downer and Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Laurie Brereton,
stating your concern over the unnecessary and avoidable global education
crisis. Congratulate the Australian Government on increasing
expenditure on basic education in the 1999 aid budget and ask Mr Downer
to now take a leadership role on the international stage.
Ask Mr Downer and Mr Brereton to:
- Endorse the Oxfam International Global Action Plan for basic education
and advocate for such a plan to be adopted by the international
community at Dakar.
- Demonstrate Australia's commitment to basic education through
allocating 8% of the 2000/01 aid budget to basic education.
- Further demonstrate Australia's commitment to poverty alleviation and
basic education by cancelling all bilateral debt owed by the Heavily
Indebted Poor Countries of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Ethopia worth a total
of $65 million.
It's also important to ask Mr Downer to personally attend the World
Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal on 26 to 28 April.
Send your letters to:
The Hon. Alexander Downer MP
Minister for Foreign Affairs
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Fax: (02) 6273 4112
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Laurie Brereton MP
Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Fax: (02) 6277 8502
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For further information on this issue, visit Community Aid Abroad's
website at http://www.caa.org.au/oxfam/advocacy/education or contact
Ronni Martin, Community Aid Abroad's National Advocacy Coordinator on
(03) 9289 9444 or email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
This Action Alert expires 12 April 2000.
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