Special report on girls' education

The Djibouti government aims to get all its boys and girls in school by the end of this decade. That target, most observers agree, is likely to prove much easier in the capital, Djibouti City, and provincial towns than in the hamlets that dot the arid countryside, where the challenges to universal primary education are strongest. Despite its small size (area 23,000 sq km, population about 500,000] Djibouti has huge variations in terms of education coverage. In the capital’s wealthier neighbourhoods, such as the ornate city centre, built at the turn of the last century with the help of Yemeni craftsmen, just about everyone who should, goes to school, education officials say. Registration rates are somewhat lower in the poorer parts of Djibouti City and in district capitals. In the countryside, where most people are nomads or semi-nomads, only a few children attend primary school. It is also in the countryside that the greatest disparities between the enrolment of boys and that of girls are to be found. The southwestern village of Kouta Bouya, where the third edition of an annual campaign to get parents to send their girls to school was launched in December 2003, is a case in point. Its school had 106 pupils, according to brochures distributed by education ministry officials at the launch; only six were girls.

Education for all as part of efforts to raise global welfare Achieving universal primary education is among a set of goals to which UN member states have committed themselves with a view to improving the wellbeing of the world’s people. The eight goals are known as the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). The commitment was made in the Millenium Declaration, a statement issued on 8 September 2000 at the end of a summit of member states at the UN headquarters in New York. The goals are: - eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; - achieving universal primary education; - promoting gender equality and empowering women; - reducing child mortality - improving maternal health; - combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; - ensuring environmental sustainability; and - developing a global partnership for development. According to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), universal education "might seem a relatively straightforward goal" but has proven just as difficult to achieve as the others. Some 121 million children are still denied this right, UNICEF says in its State of the World’s Children 2004 (SOWC 2004) report. While the target date for achieving the MDGs as a whole is 2015, states have committed themselves to getting all boys and girls of school age into school by 2005. However, "if specific attention is not paid to the needs of girls, universal primary education will be unattainable", says the SOWC 2004. 25 BY 2005 INITIATIVE This has led UNICEF to launch its 25 by 2005 Initiative which, it says, "seeks to help all countries eliminate gender disparity in education by 2005, with a special focus on 25 of the countries that are judged to be most at risk of failing to achieve that goal". The countries include 15 in Africa: Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia. Another nine are in Asia and the Pacific: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Turkey and Yemen. The remaining country is Bolivia. One of the thrusts of the 25 by 2005 strategy is to get national and community leaders, the media, the private sector and other stakeholders to support and help advance education for girls. The strategy also includes getting nations to treat girls’ education as "a case for urgent - and even emergency - action" and developing intensive interventions in this area, according to the SOWC 2004.

Primary education for all is one of the millennium development goals (MDGs), a set of eight targets for improving the welfare of the world’s people, that governments have committed themselves to achieving, as well as the promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women. The MDGs are to be achieved by 2015. However, the target date for eliminating disparities between boys and girls in primary and secondary education, thereby to promote gender equality, is 2005. UNICEF HELPING TO PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has been striving to help all countries eliminate gender disparity in education. However, it has placed special emphasis on 25 countries judged most at risk of failing to achieve this goal. Nine of these are in Asia and the Pacific, one in South America, and 15 in Africa, including Djibouti. Calculating education coverage in Djibouti is a major challenge since population estimates range from 450,000 to upwards of 700,000. The official figure - quoted by the government in its Poverty Reduction Strategy Framework - is 500,000. Based on the premise that around 18 percent of the population is between six and 12 years of age, the generally accepted estimate of the number of children of primary school age is 90,000. Gross enrolment for the 2003-2004 school year is estimated at 47 to 49 percent - one of the lowest in sub-Saharan Africa. Girls make up about 43 percent of the primary school population. There had been some improvement, said Mahdi Isse, the director of planning at the education ministry, since 1998 when there were 61 boys to every 39 girls. But the increase is far below what the government would like to see.

None of these children in a hamlet near Lake Assal, Djibouti, have seen the inside of a classroom: the nearest school is too far away

Can Djibouti meet the 2005 deadline? "We’ll get close to it," says Keith McKenzie, who heads UNICEFs Djibouti office. "I think there has been a tremendous push by the government […] over the last couple of years," he added, pointing to an "intensive campaign" led by the government, with support from donors and UN agencies such as UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP), to get more girls into school. Parity can be achieved by 2010, says Isse, so long as ongoing efforts to mobilise parents and get them to send their children, both boys and girls, to school are kept up, and obstacles to girls’ education are removed. Continued