From education to the economy, malnutrition threatens Africa’s progress

By Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva Anyone who has gone without food for a couple of days knows the debilitating effects of hunger. For many of us, the experience is transient – we fail to eat during a trip or a long working day, for example – and infrequent. But for 220 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, hunger [...]

Food crisis is also an education crisis

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report Hunger and malnutrition are urgent development problems, despite the fact that the world has the capacity to feed everyone. They also have devastating effects on education, robbing millions of young children of the opportunity to develop healthy bodies and minds, as we highlighted [...]

L’aide au développement en 2009 : un verre à moitié vide ou à moitié plein ?

De nouvelles données sur l’aide au développement ont été publiées par l’OCDE mercredi, donnant pour la première fois une idée de l’impact de la crise financière sur l’aide au développement. Alors comment les choses se présentent-elles? Premièrement, de quasi bonnes nouvelles. En moyenne, l’aide des pays riches n’a pas diminué entre 2008 et 2009 et [...]

Aid in 2009 : a glass half full or half empty?

By Elise Legault, research officer, Education for All Global Monitoring Report New aid figures were released on Wednesday by the OECD, shedding for the first time some light on the impact of the financial crisis on development assistance. So how are things looking? First the not-so-bad news. On average, aid from the richest nations did [...]

When education saves lives (2): reducing maternal mortality

By Kevin Watkins, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report There are few starker indicators of global inequality than maternal mortality. Risks of death from causes associated with pregnancy in childbirth are heavily concentrated in developing countries – over 80% of fatalities happen in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The world’s most dangerous [...]

When learning saves lives: education and child mortality

By Kevin Watkins, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report Give a man a fish, as the saying goes, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you nourish him for a lifetime. But that’s nothing. Give a girl an education and you not only transform her life chances [...]

BRIEFLY: Canada and the G8 ­­– an education opportunity

Two striking pieces in Canadian newspapers use the launch in Ottawa on Thursday March 25, of the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report as a springboard to consider how the Group of 8 summit in Canada in June could make up the Education for All funding shortfall. In the Globe and Mail, Queen Rania [...]

THE FUNDING GAP, 1: The G-8 needs to stick to its promises

Last year, leaders of the G-8 group of rich countries made a bold promise to the world’s children: No country seriously committed to Education for All, they said, would be thwarted in its achievement because of lack of resources. Impressed? You shouldn’t be. G-8 leaders have been saying the same thing at every summit for [...]

THE FUNDING GAP, 2: How donors can meet their pledges

In 2000, rich countries promised that no country seriously committed to achieving Education for All by 2015 would be thwarted because of lack of resources. The promise has been repeated at every summit for the past decade, but projections in this year’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report show that on current trends, there will [...]