UNITED NATIONS GIRLS EDUCATION INITIATIVE

Warfare in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone has caused more than 1 million refugees to flee to Guinea during the past decade. Children in Guinea remain vulnerable to food shortages, lack of clean water and preventable diseases. Medicines have been in short supply since the Government stopped subsidizing health-care services in 2004.

 

Barriers to girls’ education

• More than 50 per cent of the Guinean population is poor, surviving on less than US$1 per day.
• There is a lack of educational support, including infrastructure, equipment, handbooks and teachers.
• Illiteracy of parents limits the chances of providing education for girls.

UNGEI in action

In 2004, the National Plan of Action for Girls’ Education was launched as a strategy for implementing the policy document on girls’ education.
At the primary education level, Guinea was unable to achieve the goal of gender equity by 2005. Yet the country has made remarkable progress by reaching a gender parity index of 0.79, placing it second only to Ghana among the countries in the region.

Key initiatives

• Support community organizations in carrying out activities that generate income to increase revenues and resources for girls’ education.
• Develop partnerships and mobilize resources to reinforce the ‘offer of education’ in favour of girls.
• Continue to strengthen activities that promote literacy, non-formal education for adolescents and social mobilization towards the populations in rural areas to mitigate constraints related to sociocultural inertia.

Partners

Partnerships have been developed with the European Union, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), French Development Agency (AFD), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Bank and the World Food Programme (WFP), along with such non-governmental organizations as ActionAid International, Forum des Éducatrices de Guinée/Forum for African Women Educationalists (FEG/FAWE) and World Education.

UNGEI within other national and international frameworks

Guinea works within the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) framework.