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Statement by Ms. Kate Gilmore, UNFPA Deputy Executive Director (Programme)

Global Education for All Meeting, Muscat, Oman, 14 May 2014

Excellencies, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, It is a privilege to address you on behalf of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and may I – at the outset – join you in thanking His Majesty and the Sultanate of Oman for generous and exemplary hospitality and UNESCO for high quality expertise and collaboration. To the Oman Minister for Education and to the Director General of UNESCO, may I emphasize that your leadership for us is our strength and we are further graced in this, by that fact of your leadership as women. Committed to Education for All and commending to you the proposed goal of equitable and inclusive quality education and lifelong learning for all - UNFPA – is here present because we are not an education focused agency. Along with our fellow UN agencies here present – UN Women, UNICEF, UNDP, ILO - as well as the World Bank, we signify a multi-sector and inter-sectoral recognition of the central place that education holds in the world’s future. We are here to emphasize that many other sectors support your call for investment in education, recognising that unless education is both a stand out purpose of incoming development agenda and woven across it as a whole, inclusive, sustainable, resilient and just development will remain elusive. If we put the person firmly at the centre of our intentions, we see more clearly how action in and with other sectors can also transform educational outcomes and vice versa. For UNFPA, people count in both senses of the word: They count as individuals because – they matter as individuals – just ask any individual! And for that individual person to live in dignity and rights they must each and every one have access to – knowledge, information and essential services – these are fundamental requirements for human dignity, they are the essence of human rights and it makes of health and education for example, close and mutually dependent companions. And people also count, and matter, as populations – and the demographic count of the world’s populations reveals to us not only the contours of privilege and exclusion but also their origins. The global demographic data for the decades ahead tell us a story hidden in plain sight that, more numerous in number than ever before in the history of human kind, it is the adolescent who crouches at the starting blocks of the new development agenda – larger by number and substantial by percentage, adolescents are poised to spring forward into the development marathon with vitality, promise and energy. Without them we can’t and won’t do it. But adolescents crouch too in a second sense of the word – crouching under weight of our misshapen priorities; bent down by the exclusion, discrimination and the disadvantage caused of our failure to invest in them appropriately and sufficiently and by, I suspect, our adulthood “amnesia” for what the passage from childhood to adulthood fully entails. Bluntly, by their sheer number and because of the nature of the transition that is adolescence - their specific lived realities - adolescents are development’s make or break story. Whether we will choose to recognize it or not in the Post-2015 outcomes, - inclusive, sustainable and resilient development - will be shaped by how we address, target, and engage adolescents both within and outside of schools.

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It is why education and learning, always a right investment, are for today and for tomorrow, in particular, the smartest of investments. However, for the best dividend to be paid, complementary investments are also needed. The journey to productive adult life that education so necessarily paves, throws up the stumbling block of sexual and reproductive life. Today while we meet, yet another 20,000 girls under age 18 will give birth, most will do so in circumstances of grave poverty, in rural areas and isolated – in other words, those who are least well served by education and health systems. In low- and middle-income countries, complications from these high rates of adolescent pregnancy and childbirth will continue to be the leading cause of death for adolescent girls, noting that 90% of all adolescent pregnancies take place occur in the context of early and forced marriage or union. Meanwhile, the consequences of our failure to support and provide relevant education, information and essential services for adolescents, has seen an 50% increase in reported AIDS-related deaths among adolescents as compared to a 30% decline for the rest of us. In short, education and learning are life and death issues. This human tragedy of lives lost, of talent not realized, of “brain wastage” – is occurring at rates that no nation can afford. The World Bank estimates that if adolescent girls in Brazil and India had been able to delay first pregnancy until their early 20s, productivity would have increased by $3.5 billion and $7.7 billion, respectively. Adolescent pregnancy and childbirth costs the US taxpayer $11 billion per year, while in Uganda, the costs can amount to as much as 30 per cent of GDP— or about $15 billion. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, former President of India, has said “If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.” And let me stress, there is no room for motherhood in childhood. Education is the major protective and enabling factor for adolescents as they make their way to adulthood: the more years of schooling, the fewer early pregnancies. Let’s set ourselves the target of providing adolescents the knowledge, skills and training they need to transition into and help create decent work. However, let’s not forget to ensure their access to structured opportunities to explore their attitudes and values and practice decision-making, communication and other life skills – universal access that is comprehensive sexuality education – so that they – girls and boys – have what is necessary to make informed choices, protect themselves and others in schools and out of schools. The evidence is in: the strategic pivot point for future development is what happens to our adolescent girls. In a nutshell - the future of the world is today aged 10. And it is a girl. Educate her, empower her - sustain and transform the world. I wish you all the best in your deliberations for a successful meeting. Thank you.