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

nourishment their families cannot provide or free transport to the nearest school, find partial if not full relief in the
economic support that my people willingly offers them. Costa Ricans wisely choose to spend their money on such
assistance rather than pointless outlays for soldiery and weapons.
(40.12) There is nevertheless still a wide difference in quality between rural and urban schools and we are as
concerned as ever about the shortage of classrooms. It is also urgent to provide more back-up assistance for youth
and children in marginal urban schools; nor can there be any delay in remedying the disturbing shortfall in
secondary school coverage and doing something about the drop-out and repetition rates left over from the 1980s,
from which we have yet to recover.
(40.13) To these challenges is now added the unexpected emergency of having to meet the education needs
arising from the uncontainable avalanche of Central American immigrants fleeing the havoc of natural disasters and
bloody political conflicts or the poverty affecting their countries. Costa Rica, Mr President, distinguished Ministers
and Heads of Delegations, is the country in the world with the most immigrants as a proportion of its population.
Nearly 6% of its school population is now made up of immigrant children, most of them the children of illegal
immigrants, who have flooded into the country in recent years, filling many of our schools to the brim and using up
all the resources originally intended to give the least well-off pupils economic and social assistance. My country
has flung its doors wide open and generously granted an extensive amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal
immigrants whose children now share classrooms with Costa Rican children, plus free books, school canteens and
grants that were originally earmarked from our education budget for our own poorest pupils. We do all of this in
the satisfaction born of human solidarity, as we are quite convinced that education is a fundamental human right
that nobody may be denied and we are sure that other countries with more resources will not deny us their
assistance in these noble efforts at international solidarity.
(40.14) All of these complex circumstances, the fetters of underdevelopment, unfair international economic
treatment, foreign debt and exclusion hold us in their grip and prevent us from pursuing our aspirations. Despite
that, we Costa Ricans must build our own future with the stuff of dreams and continue our constant search for
excellence and fairness in education, guided by supreme human values and not simply responding to the demands
of the productive sector, which involves the risk of forming not complete men and women but just absurd cogs in
the wheel of a production machine and would mean abandoning the ontological vocation of self-improvement that
should govern every human being’s life.
(40.15) For education in Costa Rica the year 2000 will mark the start of a new adventure in that effort to achieve
higher levels of quality while casting off the perverse chains of inequality that deny many of our children and
youngsters a place at the banqueting table of education. The year 2000 will be a time for making a priority of
educating people in the values and culture of peace. We shall also be giving our young people aged 15 to 19 years
who have dropped out of secondary education the new and innovative option of the Virtual School, a versatile,
interactive way of reaching them in the community where they live and in their own free time. In this way we shall
apply present-day advanced technology and the country’s expanded computer facilities to educating the
underprivileged in order that education may, as we have always dreamed, be an instrument of self-fulfilment not
just for a few, but for all men and women in a country that is large in liberty, justice and peace – citizens of a new
world from which armies are banned for ever, a great world and a wide one where it will be less and less difficult to
love. Thank you very much.
41. Le PRESIDENT :
Je vous remercie, Monsieur le Ministre, et je donne la parole à l'orateur suivant, S. Exc. M. Ken
Lipenga, ministre de l'éducation, des sports et de la culture du Malawi.
42.1 Mr LIPENGA (Malawi):
Mr President of the General Conference, Mr Chairperson of the Executive Board, distinguished heads of
delegation, Mr Director-General, ladies and gentlemen, let me start by congratulating Ms Moserová on her truly
unique position of being the last UNESCO President of the second millennium, and the one who helps take our
Organization into the third millennium. We of the Malawi delegation wish her well, and we assure her of our
fullest support.
42.2 Mr President, I wish also to pay tribute to the outgoing Director-General for his remarkably successful
term of office. We commend him for the special and infectious enthusiasm he brought to his work. We praise him
with a thousand African drums for the key role he has played in reshaping the image of our Organization, giving
it fresh significance and broadening its scope of action. The outgoing Director-General can be proud of the fact
that it was during his term of office that the United Kingdom rejoined the UNESCO family. We hope it is only a
matter of time before others follow suit and complete the universality of this very important Organization.
42.3 Mr President, Malawi is very happy with recent reform measures which have freed UNESCO from
isolation and stagnation as well as addressing the criticisms of the past. Needless to say, the new millennium
poses many challenges to organizations such as ours. In response, there may be a natural temptation for us to try
and raise as many flags as possible. In our view, the prime objective of UNESCO’s continuing reform
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