UNESCO. General Conference; 30th; Records ... - unesdoc - Unesco

(23.3) How can we fail to support, continue or participate in the programme “Education for all throughout life”?
Who amongst us has not worked to ensure that science serves development? Those who, as I do, also hold the
culture portfolio have always encouraged the preservation and enhancement of the cultural and natural heritage,
with particular emphasis on the promotion of living cultures, so that Major Programme III merely stimulates a vital
strategy for multicultural and multi-ethnic countries such as Ecuador.
(23.4) Ecuador is going through one of the harshest economic crises of the century, aggravated by an external
debt burden that exceeds its gross domestic product; a nation that is suffering an institutional and political crisis,
demanding leaders who are not corrupt; and, as if that were not enough, a land that has suffered and continues to
suffer natural disasters that only add more devastating effects to what is already a state of emergency. Today, I
should like to ask UNESCO and all my colleagues here to reflect upon the need for projects, plans and programmes
that will reach the most vulnerable groups in this crisis.
(23.5) We have already done this with the cultural heritage. As it happens, one of the expected results for the
end of the biennium is, according to paragraph 03111 (page 120 in the English version) of document 30 C/5,
“National capacities in response to emergency situations upgraded through the dissemination of updated
international directories and databases concerning national emergency plans and technical emergency guides, and
of a roster of national teams of experts in emergency cultural heritage preservation”. These are the skills that we, as
governments, must begin to develop in order to be able to react immediately with educational and cultural policies
to national social emergency situations. Then it is a matter of preserving not just tangible or intangible heritage but
the rights of children and adolescents that have been infringed in the crisis.
(23.6) One of the consequences of the situation Ecuador is enduring in the field of education is the worsening
problem of school drop-outs. Between April and July 1999, 153,000 families failed to send one or more children to
school. In one region alone, affected first by the El Niño phenomenon and then by the economic crisis, around
150,000 children did not enrol for the 1999/2000 school year. All of this will certainly increase the non-attendance
rates and the number of child workers under the age of 15 years, which between January and July rose by 33,500.
(23.7) Analysis of the level of school attendance by quantiles and by age shows that 24% of 6-year-olds
(minimum school age in Ecuador) in quantiles 1 and 2, the poorest, are not enrolled in schools, and that from the
age of 12 attendance falls off dramatically. In 1998, around 340,000 children were outside the school system. Most
of them, as was to be expected, or, around 250,000 (20% of children in that age group), live in rural areas. The
situation is more serious still for inhabitants of rural areas in the lowest income bracket, as 24% of the population
aged between 6 and 15 attends no educational establishment.
(23.8) The Government of Ecuador has proposed a social protection programme through various actions with
the immediate goal of preventing the accelerated deterioration in living conditions of the social sectors hardest hit
by the crisis. These actions should likewise, in the medium term, pave the way for the formation of human capital.
We must learn how to react immediately when the education of our children is jeopardized, in order to keep them
in the classroom. The themes of infrastructure, quality of education, teacher-training and others, are important,
fundamental and primordial, forming part of the daily life of our ministries and are matters to be attended to, come
rain or shine. Nevertheless, faced with a crisis situation as described above, you will agree with me that we have a
duty to implement actions that help families keep children in school.
(23.9) We are therefore setting up a school-grant system (Beca Escolar), which is already working well in Brazil
and Mexico. Ecuador is calling for the support of member countries so that resources currently being used to pay
off the external debt may be redirected towards education and, in particular, to programmes such as the Beca
Escolar for children in the poorest families. We are fully aware that debts must be paid, but not only the debt that
burdens our economy – also the debts that crush our societies, debts towards women, children and indigenous
peoples. Let us then swap our external debt for education. That education is not exclusively pedagogical but
eminently social is something that we know. I myself have seen peasant women who take their children out of
school to add a few cents to the family income from selling sweets or flowers. I have heard how families in the
urban marginal barrios choose which one of their children will go to school, while the brothers and sisters have to
work in order to keep that child in school. The crisis is so severe that, even though they know that education is a
means of improving quality of life, families opt for daily sustenance rather than a better future. We would all do the
same were we in that situation.
(23.10) I do not venture into the countryside to talk about the quality of education when I see how the quality of
nutrition and access to child care service has deteriorated. Once more, UNESCO must turn itself into the advocate
of a new skill for our governments: the ability to handle emergencies immediately to make sure that their impact on
peoples’ education, culture and health, particularly for the poorest sections of society, is not beyond remedy? I
hope that the day is not far off, Mr President and colleagues, when UNESCO’s Programme and Budget for the
biennium includes as an expected result one similar to that referring to the endangered heritage, but which would
read: “National capacities in response to social emergency situations upgraded through the dissemination of
updated international experience and databases concerning national emergency plans and technical social
emergency proposals, and of a roster of national teams of experts in preserving access to education and culture in
crisis situations”.
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