Doha meeting fights to provide children with right to education

Doha meeting fights to provide children with 

Top officials from 16 countries met to discuss education solutions in Doha April 30th. [Ebrahim Omar/Al-Shorfa]

2014-05-07 By Ebrahim Omar in Doha
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Education ministers and high-level officials from 16 countries met in Doha last week to discuss ways to provide millions of out-of-school children with access to elementary education.

The meeting comes as part of the foundation's Educate A Child (EAC) programme, launched in 2012 to ensure quality education for millions of children worldwide.The Arab, African and Asian countries that participated in the April 30th meeting, organised by Qatari non-profit foundation Education Above All, are home to nearly a third of the world's children who are not enrolled in primary education programmes.

It included short- and long-term actions to reduce the number of children who are missing out on their right to education.

"This meeting dotted the i's and crossed the t's in order to get acquainted with the problems that lead millions of children to run away from their schools, and the prospects of returning them to the classroom," said EAC director Mary Joy Pigozzi.

It also was an opportunity to make decisions and work with stakeholders to enable children to benefit from high-quality education programmes, she said.

"The meeting focused on addressing the out-of-school child problem through the establishment of partnerships between countries in which this phenomenon is rampant in order to facilitate the discovery of solutions," said Yemeni Minister of Education Abdul Razzaq al-Ashwal.

During the meeting, the Yemeni delegation sought to obtain a $21 million grant to support efforts to solve this problem in Yemen, he said, noting that in the current academic year more than 1.6 million children did not enrol in school.

In a month, officials plan to complete procedures to integrate 102,000 children into the classroom, he said.

Since its launch, the EAC has been able to amass $1 billion, 35% of which was provided by Qatar and the rest obtained from programme partners, said EAC CEO Marcio Barbosa.

"Since its inception, the programme has marked several achievements, thanks to its executive and key partners and the support they provided to ensure the success of the programme," Barbosa told Al-Shorfa.

The EAC has implemented 44 projects in two dozen countries since its launch, reaching two million children. By the end of the 2015-2016 academic year, it aims to enable 10 million children to gain access to education, the foundation said.

Barbosa told Al-Shorfa the programme seeks to enrol marginalised children in primary education programmes in regions suffering from poverty, racism, conflicts and natural disasters.

EAC came as a global initiative and an international response to the Millennium Development Goals, Ahmed al-Meraikhi, international development director at Qatar's Ministry for Foreign Affairs, said at the meeting's opening.

Participants included Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania and Yemen.