| Remarks of the Honorable Gene B. Sperling
Assistant to the President for Economic Policy
United
States of America
International Consultative Forum on Education for All
Dakar, Senegal
April 28, 2000
Thank you Mr. Gustafusson. And I would also like to thank UNESCO
Director-General [Koichiro] Matsuura; Chair of the EFA Strategy Committee
[Knud] Mortenson; other distinguished organizers and participants of the
International Consultative Forum on Education for All. My very generous host
and the Ambassador to the United States Harriet Elam-Thomas.
I would especially like to recognize and thank our distinguished
delegation, including [USAID Assistant Administrator] Thomas Fox, [Assistant
Secretary of Education for Civil Rights] Norma Cantu, [Executive Director of
the Council of Chief State School Officers] Gordon Ambach, [USAID Deputy
Assistant Administrator] Emily Vargas-Baron and the other Americans here from
government, civil society and private sector. They have done a terrific job of
representing America at this vitally important gathering. We are also grateful
to the Academy for Educational Development, which prepared the excellent US EFA
Assessment in cooperation with our EFA National Commission.
A special thanks to the NGOs who so often serve as the foot soldiers in
this battle, specifically but not limited to Oxfam, National Education
Association, and the Global March Against Child Labor.
I would also like to express my gratitude to our Senegalese hosts. Over
the past decade, Senegal and the United States have become more than close
allies. We have become true partners. Our security cooperation spans the globe.
We have worked together to place peacekeeping troops on the ground from the
Persian Gulf to Liberia, and Senegalese troops have consistently served with
distinction. In other areas, such as economic reform and social development,
Senegal has also made important strides in recent years. President Clinton
personally asked me to convey to the people of Senegal his fond memories of his
visit and most importantly that the peaceful and gracious transfer of power
between former President Diouf and President Wade was an historic gain for
democracy that would serve as a shining example for all of Africa and the
world. The President wishes to congratulate President Wade and reaffirm our
deep commitment to even further strengthen our partnership.
We have come together here in Dakar amidst heightened global discussion
on the issue of globalization. Without question, one of the central challenges
of our day is the need to broaden participation among and within nations in the
benefits of today's rapid technological change and global economic
integration.
Out of the vigorous discussions taking place around the world on this
topic lies hope for a new consensus. That hope rests on our embracing two
realities. First, openness is critically important because international trade
and investment are indispensable engines of economic growth, and growth is, in
turn, indispensable to poverty reduction. But, second, while openness is
essential, it is necessary but not sufficient for developing countries. For
this reason, industrialized countries must work harder with our developing
country partners on more direct efforts to combat poverty and raise living
standards, through increased cooperation and assistance on health, education,
institutional capacity, and infrastructure --- the fundamental building blocks
of economic progress.
This new consensus must be anchored not in words, but in deeds. As some
of our civil rights leaders say: not just by talking the talk, but by walking
the walk. We believe that open trade lifts living standards, but we also
believe that to raise living standards everywhere, we must seek a new consensus
agenda that goes beyond trade to include a larger vision of globalization with
a human face.
A process of globalization that is designed not only to prevent a race
to the bottom but also to prevent complacency in the face of stubbornly
persistent global poverty and wasted human potential.
We industrialized countries can begin by opening our doors further to
products from developing countries. At the President's urging, our
Congress has recently taken important steps toward passage of the historic
African Growth and Opportunity Act and Caribbean Basin Trade Enhancement
legislation, and we continue to press to grant China permanent normal tariff
status in support of its accession to the World Trade Organization. The Africa
bill --- while not all the President aspired to --- would provide duty-free and
quota-free access to our market for nearly all products from Sub-Saharan
Africa. And, in the apparel sector, the compromise bill would permit an
estimated 30% to 40% growth per year in duty-free exports to the US of garments
made in Africa from African fabric, creating an important incentive for new
investment and job creation in an industry that has historically been a
catalyst for job creation and economic development. We are hopeful that
Congress will send the President a final bill for his signature soon,
permitting us at long last to inaugurate a new era of US-African economic
relations.
Again, we believe that expanding trade and investment is an important
piece of the strategy to spread the benefits of globalization more widely, but
that it is only one piece.
Equally important is the need to combat poverty directly by helping
developing countries create the conditions ripe for unleashing the creative and
productive potential of their people. This can be done by intensifying our
support in three areas in particular; (1) debt relief; (2) infectious diseases
prevention and treatment and; (3) basic education and continuing efforts to end
the most abusive forms of child labor.
The first part of this direct, three-pronged assault on poverty -- debt
relief -- is closely related to the other two. In many poor countries, foreign
debt obligations exceed health or education budgets or both. This is a major
reason why President Clinton, in a Summit meeting with African ministers in
Washington last year, proposed a sweeping expansion of the Heavily-Indebted
Poor Country Initiative (HIPC) to make debt relief faster, broader, and deeper.
That proposal formed the basis of the G-7 agreement last June in Cologne,
Germany, which will reduce the debts of over 30 countries by about 70 percent
when combined with previous efforts, freeing additional resources for
investment in health and education. Last fall, he pledged unilaterally to go
beyond the Cologne framework and cancel 100 percent of the US government debt
owed by countries qualifying for it. Other G-7 countries have since followed
suit, and we are pleased that the first developing countries have recently
begun receiving expanded debt relief.
The second way we should intensify the fight against poverty is by
increasing assistance for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases.
Just this week, the Financial Times reported that malaria alone has cost Africa
tens of billion dollars in lost GDP. More people die each year of infectious
diseases than all soldiers from every country in World War I. In his budget
this year, President Clinton proposed a $1 billion tax incentive aimed at
stimulating the development of vaccines for diseases in poor countries as well
as an increased contribution to the Global Alliance for Vaccines Initiative
(GAVI), and an appeal to the World Bank and other multilateral development
banks to dedicate an additional $400 million to $900 million of low interest
loans to address infectious diseases. We are encouraging our G-7 partners to
make similar efforts. The growing HIV/AIDS pandemic, especially in Africa,
demands our attention. It compels us to act!
The third prong of our strategy is what has brought us together here for
this historic gathering: creating access to quality basic education for all of
the world's children. The Dakar Framework for Action is grounded in the
moral belief that children everywhere have a right to explore their potential
and better their own lives and that of their families.
One of the contributions made by the Dakar Framework is that it paints a
thorough, textured picture of the many obstacles to and benefits from basic
education. It rightly presents basic education as a springboard to economic
opportunity, better health, empowerment of women, sustainable population growth
and environmental conditions, and stronger democratic participation and respect
for human rights. When our Supreme Court declared our shameful period of racial
segregation of schools unconstitutional in 1954, Chief Justice Warren stated
that education was integral to all aspects of first class citizenship. In his
opinion, he stated: "In these days, it is doubtful that any child may
reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an
education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it,
is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms." What was true
for the United States nearly 50 years ago, rings more true for too many of the
world's children today.
When our Secretary of the Treasury, Larry Summers, was Chief Economist
for the World Bank, he gave a seminal speech stating that basic education,
particularly for girls, was perhaps the single most productive investment we
could make to raise living standards in poor countries. During this conference
that proposition has been reaffirmed repeatedly and correctly by Kofi Anan and
many others. Much of the return from this investment is realized over time, but
it is unmistakable. Within each nation, perhaps each family, there are those
who have benefited from a generational chain of human betterment created by the
educational opportunity afforded to a single child. For nearly every child that
is rescued from unfulfilled potential by a quality education, there are
succeeding generations of children and grandchildren who are likely to be
better educated, healthier, and more prosperous.
The President sent me, his National Economic Adviser, here to address
you out of a conviction that education truly is the closest thing we have to an
answer to the universal quest for economic opportunity. And it must be at the
center of any long-term strategy for economic development and poverty
reduction. This is increasingly true as information technology pervades more
and more aspects of economic activity. He sent me here to outline for you a
perspective on how all of us represented here --- developing countries,
developed countries, international institutions, and the private sector -- can
join together in a genuine and effective global partnership to make Education
for All a reality.
First, we must combine education strategies with our efforts to fully
implement ILO Convention 182 banning the worst forms of child labor. When
children are not in school, they are not only failing to reach their potential,
they are too often being placed at risk, working in abusive or hazardous
environments in factories, sweatshops or even brothels and drug trafficking
networks. Those in industrialized countries who call for globalization to be
more humane must recognize that there can be no true solution to abusive child
labor without universal, free, and compulsory basic education. Parents of
limited means can not be expected to sacrifice their child's income by
sending them to school, especially when doing so would result in significant
added expenses for fees, uniforms, travel, and supplies. Poor quality and
costly schools discourage parents from appreciating the long-term benefits of
education for their children. The US stands ready to help. In the past two
years, we have increased our support for the ILO's International Program
for the Elimination of Child Labor, which helps developing countries remove
children from work and place them in school, from $3 million to $30 million.
This year, President Clinton has asked Congress for a further 50 percent
increase. Now the program's largest funder, we have helped create
educational alternatives to work for about 74,500 children in Africa, Asia, and
Latin America. During his recent visit to Bangladesh, the President announced
that we will finance a new IPEC initiative to remove an additional 30,000
children from a number of hazardous industries over the next few years.
Second, developing countries must develop and come forward with
solid National EFA plans for improving access to quality basic education. Part
of this responsibility involves setting the right priorities, whether it be
eliminating gender disparities, increasing support for early childhood care and
education, implementing assessments, creating HIV/AIDS awareness programs, or
increasing and redeploying resources for basic education for children, youth,
and adults. The path to universal access inevitably must begin with developing
countries themselves.
Third, developed countries must be prepared to respond concretely
to these plans with increased assistance. We should fully finance the Cologne
debt relief framework, whose full implementation has a direct bearing on the
extent to which developing countries will be able to commit their own
additional resources for basic education. For our part, we are working hard to
convince our Congress to appropriate our contribution to the HIPC Trust Fund.
In addition, the President is proposing both our efforts to increase our
bilateral assistance for basic education by over 50% in this year alone -- a
doubling of resources in just the last few years – and our efforts to
fight abusive child labor. We encourage other donor countries to consider
similar increases in their budgets for bilateral education aid, whether by
overall increases in aid levels or a reallocation of resources from tertiary to
basic education.
Fourth, international institutions including multilateral development
banks (MDBs) and organizations such as UNESCO and UNICEF must continue to play
a key coordinating role by marshaling and targeting donor assistance to basic
education in the LDCs. The United States supports the Framework for
Action's basic aim of ensuring that "no country seriously committed
to basic education will be thwarted in the achievement of this goal by lack of
resources." To provide the necessary impetus for developing countries to take
action by committing to systematic broadening of educational access, we must be
clear that more resources will be available to those who do their part. Like
the line in the American movie "Field of Dreams" -- "if you build it, they will
come" – we must be able to say to the poorest countries, " if you build a
commitment to basic education, we will be with you."
The World Bank can play a critical role, particularly with the
outstanding leadership and commitment of its President, Jim Wolfensohn. The
World Bank and the international community should consider concrete, multi-year
targets for a substantial, even dramatic, increase in World Bank lending,
particularly for basic education and to ensure equity among girls and boys.
Over the past several years, World Bank lending for education has varied
widely, from $1.01 billion in FY97 (5.3 percent of total lending) to $3.11
billion in FY98 (10.9 percent) and $2.01 billion in FY99 (7 percent) with less
than half going to basic education.
For example, assume the World Bank were to increase overall education
lending by 50 percent -- if they devoted this entire increase to basic
education then lending for basic education could be doubled -- a step that
could galvanize all parties toward action in support of the Dakar Education For
All Goals.
Fifth, to make these two preceding steps happen, the G-7 countries must
exercise leadership. Just as the G-7 was the catalyst for expanded debt relief
last year, so it should consider taking the initiative on basic education and
health at its summit this year in Japan. We will strongly encourage that action
on the results of the World Education Forum be a serious topic on the agenda
G-7 meeting in Okinawa.
Sixth, we should consider tapping more deeply into the vast reservoirs
of private philanthropy in order to leverage official assistance. Many of the
corporations and individuals that have benefited from the global economy are
looking for ways to give something back. Surely there are private sector
counterparts interested in performing a similar service for basic education
given the synergies for economic growth, public health, democratic
participation, and environmental sustainability. It is hard to imagine a more
effective investment in the success of open markets and global integration than
an expansion of literacy.
For example, an information clearinghouse might be created to apprise
interested corporations and foundations of opportunities to respond to an
EFA-approved action plan and complement bilateral and multilateral donor
assistance. When I return home, I plan to seek out a meeting with private
groups to explore ways they might be willing to play an enhance role.
Finally, we must continue to address new challenges. Let me mention
three. First without drawing attention away from basics of free education,
quality teachers, and acceptable teacher-student ratios, we must also be
committed to ensuring that the revolution of the internet and information
technology become a force for equity and not a force for a digital divide that
will widen the global divide. Again, while we must focus on the basics,
education technology and the internet will increasingly become a new basic. In
a community without a library, a single computer connected to the internet, can
be a connection to every library.
Second, since the 1990 conference in Jomtien, there has been
considerable research on early childhood development of the brain and of
learning. We must incorporate this new research into our strategies and go much
further in developing cost effective early childhood learning strategies for
even the poorest countries. I realize that this is a further challenge for
nations still struggling to achieve basic primary education, but we simply
cannot ignore what we now know scientifically, about what type of early
childhood education is needed to allow all of our children to explore that full
potentials of their minds.
Third, we can not and must not leave behind those children with
disabilities and special needs. Education can be the medicine of hope and
opportunity to these children; new technologies can provide opportunities that
seemed beyond us only a few years ago. Imagine what some of these new
technologies can do for children who are blind or deaf or even bed-ridden.
Again, I realize that even in the United States this can be challenging in
terms of resources. But if we believe in the basic moral imperative that all
children would have a chance to reach their potential, than we must include
children with disabilities in our vision and our concrete plans.
The global economy is generating vast new wealth and raising living
standards throughout much of the world, yet there is much we can do to widen
the circle of economic opportunity. The World Education Forum has taken an
important step in establishing the principle that no country that has developed
an effective plan to increase access to basic education should lack the
resources to implement it. Today, I have tried to outline how we can create a
truly global, public-private partnership to make good on this noble principle.
The steps I have outlined would generate billions of dollars of additional
resources, providing more than ample incentive for developing countries to
organize themselves to rise to the challenge.
The stakes are high, especially for the children. We must think of the
children. If we miss the opportunity to make this global partnership a reality,
an estimated 75 million children will still be deprived basic education
come 2015.
Yesterday, I traveled to a rural village called Keur Sega. We traveled
by hundreds -, even thousands of children who were not in school, on our way to
a village that previously had no primary school whatsoever. Now thanks to a
small grant from our Embassy here, and a tremendous effort by the parents, the
village and the government, there are two functioning classrooms, excellent
teachers, with only the first and second grade, with over 50 students in each
class. The students finishing first grade could read as well as students
anywhere in the United States. At the end of my visit, when we asked if any of
the students wanted questions, someone told me that some of the students might
use the question-and-answer period to make unreasonable demands of me. One
little boy finishing second grade, dressed in his coat and tie, raised his hand
and said, "I wish we could have the resources so that we could have a third
grade I could go to, and a bathroom at the school. This did not seem to me to
be an unreasonable request.
Thank you. |
