A/RES/65/183
environments and societies is essential for achieving the goals of eradicating
poverty, reducing child mortality, addressing population growth, achieving gender
equality and the empowerment of women, ensuring sustainable development, peace
and democracy, and promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental
freedoms,
Convinced that literacy is crucial to the acquisition by every child, young
person and adult of the essential life skills that will enable them to address the
challenges that they may face in life and represents an essential condition of lifelong
learning, which is an indispensable means for effective participation in the
knowledge societies and economies of the twenty-first century,
Affirming that the realization of the right to education, especially for girls,
contributes to the promotion of human rights, gender equality and the eradication of
poverty,
Recognizing the necessity of improving all aspects of the quality of education
so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially
in the areas of literacy, numeracy, essential life skills and human rights education,
thereby enabling all persons to excel,
Welcoming the considerable efforts that have been made so far by Member
States and the international community to address the objectives of the Decade and
to implement the International Plan of Action, in particular in the three priority
areas for the remaining years of the Decade identified through the mid-Decade
review, namely, mobilizing stronger commitment to literacy, reinforcing effective
literacy programme delivery and harnessing new resources for literacy,
Recognizing the importance of removing barriers, outside and within education
systems, so as to provide equitable educational and learning opportunities for all
children,
Reaffirming the right of indigenous peoples to have non-discriminatory access
to all levels and forms of education provided by States, and recognizing the
importance of effective measures to promote access for indigenous individuals, in
particular children, to education in their own language, when possible, as addressed
in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 3
2F
Noting with deep concern that, according to the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization, 796 million adults do not have basic literacy
skills and 69 million children of primary school age remain out of school, that
millions more young people leave school without a level of literacy adequate for
productive and active participation in their societies, that the issue of literacy may
not be sufficiently high on national agendas to generate the kind of political and
economic support required to address global literacy challenges and that the world
is unlikely to meet those challenges if the present trends continue,
Deeply concerned about the persistence of the gender gap in education, which
is reflected by the fact that, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization, nearly two thirds of the world’s non-literate adults are
women,
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Resolution 61/295, annex.