EDUCATION: Reinforcing a 10-year-old commitment

The world's failure to achieve education for all can no longer be tolerated, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said in New York on Tuesday, ahead of the World Education Forum to be held in Dakar, Senegal, on 26-28 April. "As we enter the third millenium, more than 110 million children -almost two-thirds of them girls- are excluded from schooling," Bellamy said. Bellamy said she hoped the Dakar meeting - the biggest global conference on education in a decade - would re-ignite commitment and action for education that was severely challenged during the 1990s by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the expansion of armed conflict and unprecedented natural disasters. [See separate item titled 'AFRICA: Dakar meeting to reinforce commitment to education, says UNICEF']