Launching of report: the state of the world's Children 2004
Regional, Culture, 12/15/2003

A celebration was held on December, 13, at the Damascus Meridian hotel marking the launch of the State of the World's Children 2004 with "Girls Education and development" as the main theme of this year.

The launch ceremony was attended by UNICEF Damascus program coordinator and officer in charge Narinder Sharma, the minister of social affairs and labor, minister of education, FAO's Damascus office deputy assistant Salim Zahweh; Syrian good offices two ambassadors at the UN Mrs. Mona Wasef and Dureid Lahham, and representatives of the Syrian local media and officials concerned.

Giving a deep insight to the report, Sharma said that the report provided the situation of world's children starting from basic indicators of health, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, education, demographic, economic, women, child protection indicators and the rate of progress. He said that in most of the indicators, Syria has steady progress. Considering the critical indicator of well-being of children, Sharma said that the report mentions that Sierra Leone is on top of the list of countries with high under 5 Mortality Rate, while Sweden is ranking 193 with the lowest rate at the bottom of the list. He said that Syria is ranking 105, same as Saudi Arabia and Thailand. He added that the report mentions that 121 million children are out of school and 65 million of them are girls.

Highlighting the report, Sharma said that the 65 million girls out of school will never command the world's attention in the same way that a war will, but their plight is nonetheless an emergency.

He said that leaders from all levels of society must take necessary urgent steps to address this important issue to ensure overall development of nations. "By doing so. We would fail yet again to reach that critical mass of educated population that is needed to shift a nation from survival mode into development mode," Sharma commented.

In this regard, Sharma quoted Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations that "there is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls." Sharma detailed that universal education might seem a relatively straightforward goal while addressing the Millennium Development Goals, but it has proven as difficult as any to achieve. He indicated that despite thousands of successful projects in countries around the globe, gender parity in education, in access to school, successful achievement and completion, is as elusive as ever and girls continue to systematically lose out on the benefits that an education affords. As a result, the children, whose lives would have been saved if their mothers had been educated, continue to die. Those boys and girls who would have been healthier, and their mothers been educated continued to suffer needlessly.

He said that just as governments have obligations, parents and communities also have an obligation to ensure that all the children access and complete a defined cycle of quality basic education. This is why basic education not only needs to be free but also compulsory, so that rights of children can be legally upheld in the face of those parents who would deny them the chance of accessing and completing their education. Fortunately, Syria under the leadership of President Bashar al-Assad is committed to free and compulsory primary education in the country, Sharma said.

Focusing on gender disparities regarding school attendance for girls, Sharma said that statistical evidence shows that general disparities in rural and urban, and poor and rich categories, are more significant than gender disparities when it comes to school attendance. However, within the rural populations and the poor, girls and women tend to be more disadvantaged than boys and men. Thus while gender on its own might not be the most acute form of disadvantage, it represents a complex form of compound disadvantage for girls from poor rural backgrounds; and these are the majority of children currently denied their right to basic education.

Sharma emphasized that this is why it is critical to target girls specifically, as a means of leveraging success for all boys and girls in accessing and completing a good quality basic education. He said that in Syria the disparities in girl's education are prominent in north and north-east governorates, adding that therefore UNICEF joined hands with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor, the Ministry of Culture, and Women General Union to bring the girls back to school. Various recent studies and evaluations have clearly shown the barriers facing girls in access and more pragmatic reasons.

Within educational environment: safety and security for girls in schools and on the way to school; Inadequate water and sanitation facilities for girls; inconvenient school hours; unwelcoming school atmosphere; curricula's tough and lengthy and sometimes redundant; teachers's apathy, tardiness, lack of proper training and their disappointment with the salary.

Sharma also indicated other social- economic reasons: traditions; to that there is a perception that education is not so important for girls; Girls will get married and go to their husband's house, hence no need for education; it is better for the girl to learn how to be a good housewife; illiterate parents propagate disinterest in education.

An evidence on that cited by Sharma is manifested with the Bedouin lifestyle, travel with livestock disturbs continuity of education. Economically, he indicated, the investment in education is not seen as profitable when compared to the gain attained through agricultural work; poverty sometimes does not allow the family to spend on education; in most of the large rural and poor families, children's well being and education suffers.

He recommended that with the rights of girls unmet, change is clearly needed. But is needed at many levels and will not be achieved through enrolment drives alone. He noted that to successfully remove the barriers that prevent girls from accessing an education, and succeeding in and completing school, societies will inevitably have to deal with factors that are fundamental to the quality of life of the whole community. Girls education is so inextricably linked with the other facets of human development that to make it a priority is to also make change on a range of other fronts, from the health and status of women, to early childhood care, from nutrition, water and sanitation to community empowerment, from the reduction of child labor and other forms of exploitation to the peaceful resolution of conflicts.

Sharma concluded by highlighting the fact that the media, both print and visual, needs to take its constructive role side by side with the political and community initiatives.

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