UNITED NATIONS GIRLS EDUCATION INITIATIVE

Education is a basic human right and fundamental to the fight for human dignity and freedom. For 125 million children and 880 million adults, that right is violated everyday.

The Global Campaign for Education promotes education as a basic human right, and mobilizes public pressure on governments and the international community to fulfill their promises to provide free, compulsory public basic education for all people; in particular for children, women and all disadvantaged, deprived sections of society.

Principles

The campaign is driven by the conviction that quality education for all is achievable, and by the concern for the immense costs of failure.

The GCE believes that in an increasingly knowledge-based economy, exclusion from education will translate into growing poverty, inequality and deprivation.

The Global Campaign for Education commits itself to achieve its mission with objectivity, transparency and accountability and to follow democratic norms and processes in all its plans and actions.

With so much to gain, there can be no excuse for delay. The GCE therefore demands that the international community and governments of the South take immediate action to implement the Education for All goals and strategies agreed by 185 world governments at Dakar in April 2000. I

In particular, we call:
• On governments, to involve citizens' groups, teachers and communities in developing concrete plans of action for delivering and sustaining free, good quality public education for all;
• On governments, to abolish fees and charges for public primary education, and to increase their own spending on adult, early childhood, primary and basic education, with priority investments in schools and teachers serving the most disadvantaged groups;
• On the World Bank and rich Northern countries, to increase aid and debt relief for basic education, and fund a Global Initiative to back national plans with speedy, coordinated and predictable delivery of the additional resources needed;
• On civil society organizations, to hold their own governments and international institutions accountable for upholding the right to education, and delivering on the Education for All goals.