EVENTS: UN-sponsored Arab regional forum focuses on supporting girls' education

UN-sponsored Arab regional forum focuses on supporting girls? education

3 May 2006 ? Arab media professionals, human rights organizations, academia and United Nations agencies have begun meeting in Dubai to hammer out ways to improve girls? access to quality education, the UN Children?s Fund (UNICEF) said today, highlighting that while there have been advances in the Arab world, out of 70 million illiterates an estimated two-thirds of these are women and girls.

Addressing the Second Arab Regional Media Forum, Thomas McDermott, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, called on members of the media to become credible advocates for children, and to strengthen their role as monitors of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other promises agreed upon by countries to boost national support for girls' enrolment in school.

"Media also need to make all of us, the policymakers, accountable for results," he said at the three-day event that began on Tuesday. The MDGs are a set of eight goals aimed at slashing a host of socio-economic ills by 2015, one of which is to eliminate global gender disparity.

FULL ARTICLE AT: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=18330&Cr=girl&Cr1=education

MORE INFO: http://www.unicef.org/media/media_33739.html

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Chris Schuepp
Young People's Media Network - Coordinator

 

Youth Media Consulting GbR
c/o ECMC (European Centre for Media Competence)
Bergstr. 8 / 11th floor
D-45770 Marl - Germany

 

Tel./Fax: +49 2365 502480
Mobile: +49 176 23107083
Email: cschuepp@unicef.org
URL: www.unicef.org/magic
Mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/youthful-media

 

The YPMN is supported by UNICEF and hosted by the ECMC.

 

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