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Lack of literacy pushes 776 million youths to the wall: UNESCO

Staff Report

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Coalition for Education (PCE) on Tuesday organised a seminar on adult literacy titled ’For Developed and Peaceful Pakistan’. A press release issued by the organisers said Ichiro Miyazawa, of the UNESCO, addressed the seminar. Miyazawa said literacy remained a pre-eminent global challenge. “Lacks of literacy and innumeracy skills keeps a staggering 776 million young people and adults, or 16 percent of the global adult population, on the margins of society,” he said. He said millions more left schools without acquiring basic literacy and innumeracy skills necessary to empower individuals with the confidence and knowledge to make informed choices. He said UNESCO was actively engaged in promoting literacy worldwide as the global coordinator of the Education for All (EFA) initiative and of the UN literacy decade (2003-2012). He said, “Our attention is focused on improving quality of literacy programmes, targeting countries with high illiteracy rates through the Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) and raising awareness about the fundamental importance of literacy.” “According to estimates of he 2009 EFA Global Monitoring Report, unless current trends are changed, 700 million adults will still be unable to read and write in 2015, only 10 percent fewer than now,” he said. He said, “We should promote reading habit, because it will enable us to be literate. Making people literate are saving people in each field of life.” Zehra Arshad, PEC national coordinator, Mazhar Arif, Society for Alternative Media and Research executive director, Nisar Amin, and Mehreena Muqadissa also spoke on the occasion.

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