World Conference on Education for All: Meeting Basic Learning Needs - Final Report: 3. Education for All: The Consensus-Building - Summary of Interventions in the Plenary Commission: Commitments: Enlarging the Global Resource Pool

Enlarging the Global Resource Pool

Sweden, speaking on behalf of the Nordic countries, urged donor countries to reflect seriously on the issue of aid volume:

So far only the Netherlands and the Nordic countries have achieved the 0.7% of GNP target set up by the UN. We keep reminding the international community of this basis for international solidarity. Otherwise conferences like this run the risk of producing merely words.

Resource needs are considerable. A joint UNESCO-UNICEF-World Bank study presented at the Conference estimated that in the 72 low-income and middle-income countries, it will take, on average, an additional US$5 billion per year in local and international resources over the next decade for these countries to ensure the opportunity for all children to have access to primary education.

Taken on its own, this is a large sum. But let us put it in perspective:

• It is only two days' expenditure on arms by the industrialized nations and only one week of military spending in the developing countries.

• It constitutes only 2 per cent of what developing countries are obliged to pay in debt servicing every year.

Is it too much to expect that we be prepared to make adjustments in many other expenditures in order to bring an educated generation into the 21st century?

W. H. Draper III
Administrator, UNDP

Education for All is within human reach. We must choose to use our resources appropriately in its pursuit. When so much can be done for so many, the time to begin is now.

F. Mayor
Director-General, UNESCO

In the past three decades of development, we have learned... that education is the root of all development... that spending on education is a highly productive investment... (and that) female literacy also has multiplier effects. Let reluctant finance ministers, unwilling to commit adequate national budgets to education, ponder over these facts of life.

William Draper III
Administrator, UNDP

Our priorities in the UNDP are determined by governments of the developing countries. I am confident that with their support, they will ask us to double or triple our technical assistance to meet basic learning needs, and we will welcome it.

W.H. Draper III
Administrator, UNDP

Our Organization has made literacy and basic education the absolute priority of its new Medium-Term Plan and is substantially increasing its programme support for basic education. International Literacy Year 1990 is the starting point for UNESCO's Ten-year Programme to Eliminate Illiteracy.

F. Mayor
Director-General, UNESCO

UNICEF on its part is proposing doubling of its support to basic education by the mid-1990s, to 15 per cent of total programme support, with a further increase to 20 per cent by 2000. Since the total UNICEF programme is expected to continue to grow in real terms over the 1990s, the proposed increase amounts to a growth from less than US$ 50 million currently to more than US$100 million per year by the mid-1990s and a quadrupling to some US$200 million by 2000.

J. P. Grant
Executive Director, UNICEF

The World Bank is the largest single donor of financial support for educational development, having loaned a total of more than $10 billion for education since 1963. We account for 15 percent of international support for education. The Bank will double its educational lending over the next three years to an annual level of $1.5 billion, and we will improve our performance and effectiveness. Our goal will be to help countries put in place the educational policy framework and investment programs necessary to move towards education for all. Support for basic primary education will be the dominant priority.

B. Conable
President, World Bank