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The organisers of the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal on Wednesday emphasised that equitable and universal basic education "will never" be achieved without an increased role for NGOs and civil society.
"The UN has an important role to play in underscoring the point that without a greater role for NGOs and civil society, education for all will never be achieved," the executive secretary of the forum, Svein Osttveit told journalists.
The forum is expected to synthesise the results of the largest and most comprehensive stocktaking of education in history and set clear goals to meet the target of education for all by the year 2015. More than 180 countries took part in the two-year Education For All (EFA) 2000 assessment as well as six major regional conferences held in late 1999 and 2000.
"The educational assessment is a report card for countries, and like most report cards, there are some higher marks and some falling marks," a basic education expert at UNESCO, Victor Ordonez, said at the press conference.
The three-day forum is being attended by heads of state, education ministers and other decision-makers from over 180 countries, representatives of more than 100 international and national NGOs, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and the heads of UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Bank.
[For further information on the World Education Forum, consult
http://www2.unesco.org/wef/en-news/coverage_relea.shtm ]
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