لراوبر ویب پاڼه لراوبر يو افغان – تازه خبرونه
KABUL: UNESCOs Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) in Afghanistan would receive a grant of $13 million from the government of Japan, the UN agency announced.
This grant, to be administered by UNESCO, will benefit almost 600,000 individuals – notably women who are unable to read or write – in 18 Afghan provinces, according to a statement from the organisation.
The official signing ceremony was held in Kabul the other day, with the Director of UNESCOs Kabul office Shigeru Aoyagi and Japans Ambassador to Afghanistan Hideo Sato in the presence of Education Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar.
On the occasion, UNESCO Director-General Kochiro Matsuura said he was extremely pleased that the government of Japan had decided to support the efforts of Afghanistan in this way. He added literacy was by no means a panacea for all development challenges, but it did remain an essential and indispensable tool for development, and had shown what it could achieve the world over.
It was crucial to help Afghanistan rise to the challenge, he observed. Afghanistans Education Ministry worked with UNESCO and other international partners in 2007 to draft a national strategic plan, where literacy was identified as one of eight priority programmes.
The Afghan government designated the LIFE initiative as the national framework for action to improve literacy. In a press release emailed to Pajhwok Afghan News from Paris, UNESCO said illiteracy rates in Afghanistan remained among the highest in the world despite concerted efforts since the fall of the Taliban government in 2001.
There are glaring discrepancies between urban and rural areas, on the one hand, and between men and women, on the other. According to a 2005 report on the Millennium Development Goals for Afghanistan, the literacy rate was estimated at 34% in 2004 for those aged 15 years and over (50% for men and 18% for women). In rural areas where some 74% of the population lived, UNESCO estimated, almost 90% of women and 63% of men were unable to read or write.
The figures rank Afghanistan alongside countries such as Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. UNESCOs Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) was launched in 2005 as a framework for global action aimed at helping developing countries to improve literacy and to achieve Education for All goals. LIFE targets countries where the rate of literacy is below 50%, or where more than 10 million people are illiterate.