UNESCO Dhaka

Ministers and high level government officials representing eight South Asian countries agreed to step up their efforts to eliminate illiteracy from the region by 2015 when they met at the second ministerial meeting of South Asia Education for All (EFA) Forum in Dhaka on13-14 December 2009.

Participants from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Maldives, Bhutan and Afghanistan met to evaluate the state of education, especially the efforts to achieve the EFA goals, in their respective countries and plan the way forward to attain education for all in the region.

The meeting formulated the Dhaka Declaration which basically charts the forum's achievements, its challenges ahead and its collective pledges with regard to attaining universal education in the South Asia region by 2015. Inclusion of the out-of-school children from the most marginalised sections of the society, decentralization the overall education management form the basis of the Declaration.

Mobilization of resources was the other priority area that demands urgent attention. The eight country reports presented in the meeting revealed that none of the countries could or did spend 4% of their GDP as they decided when the Forum met for the first time in Pakistan in 2003, except for Maldives which currently allocates close to 7% of their GDP. In the Dhaka Declaration the Forum has committed a more ambitious target, 6% of the GDP.

The Dhaka Declaration also highlighted the need to identify causes of exclusions, amending or establishing fresh laws, strengthening institutional capacity for education planning and management and ensuring participation of all stakeholders including the media, civil society and non-government organisations.

Inaugurating the meeting, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina urged all South Asian nations to work together to ensure education for all in the region. "We believe that realities of the 21st century demand education for excellence and excellence for all. In a global village, under-performance in one corner affects the welfare of individuals in the other corner. Therefore, we have to work together to ensure EFA goals in this region," said Hasina. She also mentioned some of her government's programmes including setting up of school-cum-cyclone shelters and expansion of school feeding initiative aimed at reaching the children in the poverty-ridden parts of Bangladesh. She reiterated her government's resolve to achieve a self-imposed target of 100 percent enrollment of school-age children by 2011 and 100 percent literacy in 2014.

The opening session was also addressed by Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid, State Minister for Primary and Mass Education M Motahar Hossain, and Wang Jo King, director of Asia Pacific Regional Bureau of Education of Unesco, Bangkok.

In the joint press conference held on 14 December Primary and Mass Education Minister Afsarul Amin, State Minister Motihar Hossain, Secretary in-charge Badrul Alam Tarafdar, Education Minister of the Maldives Mustafa Lutfi, State Minister for Education of Nepal Govinda Chaudhury Thara spoke and answered queries of journalists.

The Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (MOPME), in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (MOE), Bangladesh National Commission for UNESCO (BNCU) and UNICEF organised the meeting with the technical and financial support from UNESCO.