Quality Education

Photo: Secretary-General António Guterres launched Youth 2030, the United Nations Youth Strategy, at a high-level Event held at United Nations Headquarters in New York, 24 September 2018. Credit: Mark Garten/UN Photo

Educating Youth for Achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

By Jayathma Wickramanayake

The writer is UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth. Following are extensive excerpts from her article in July 2019 issue of the UN Chronicle. The views expressed do not necessarily imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations.

NEW YORK (IDN-INPS) – At the end of May this year, I visited the Gaza Strip for the first time in my life. I was there to support the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) with their work on advocacy, policy influencing and resource mobilization. While visiting a school, I met two young people, Deema and Kareem, who were kind enough to show me around. Deema, Kareem and their friends dream of becoming teachers, doctors or engineers.

: UN Bureau; OPINION; 22 August 2019

Photo: Offshore wind turbines. Credit: UN

‘Green Tickets’ for First Ever UN Youth Climate Summit

UN Chief Urges Young People Worldwide to Join Online and in Local Communities

By Santo D. Banerjee

NEW YORK (IDN) – In an obvious expression of support for the ‘FridaysforFuture’ movement, whose initiator Greta Thunberg is sailing to New York, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is keen to mobilize youth for what he has termed “the defining issue of our time”. One hundred outstanding young climate champions chosen from around the world will receive support to participate in the first-ever UN Youth Climate Summit on September 21 at the UN Headquarters in New York.

: Santo D. Banerjee; SUSTAINABILITY; Climate Action; 21 August 2019

Photo: A boy reads from his textbook in a camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Credit: UNICEF Patrick Brown

Rohingya Refugee Children Want to Learn, Says UNICEF

By Sean Buchanan

NEW YORK (IDN) – The daily struggle to survive for Myanmar’s Rohingya people in some of the world’s largest refugee settlements has caused overwhelming despair and jeopardised the hopes of an entire generation, according to the head of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Henrietta Fore.

In a report marking two years since the arrival of around 745,000 Rohingya civilians in Bangladesh – after fleeing State-led persecution and violence in Myanmar – UNICEF Executive Director Fore appealed for urgent investment in education and skills training.

: Phil Harris; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 18 August 2019

Image credit: UN | Photo Credit: Mitsu (Eric) Kimura, SUA Archivist

UN To Commemorate 20th Anniversary of the Culture of Peace Declaration

Interview with Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury*

NEW YORK (IDN) – The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted, by consensus and without reservation, its pioneering and norm-setting resolution 53/243 on the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace in 1990. The forthcoming UNGA is convening on September 13 the High-Level Forum on the Culture of Peace underlining the importance the world body attaches to full and effective implementation of these forward-looking decisions which are universally applicable and respond to the yearnings of every people for progress. Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, Founder of the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP), explains the origin and profound significance of the concept.

: Ramesh Jaura; OPINION; 16 August 2019

Photo: UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Credit: Kea Taylor

Transforming Education for a New Generation of Leaders

Viewpoint by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The writer is UN Women Executive Director. She issued this statement for International Youth Day, 2019.

NEW YORK (IDN) – Sixteen-year old Gambian Jakomba Jabbie wants to be an aerospace engineer. A vocal advocate for girls’ education, she created a robotics team at school to show that girls can also participate in the area of technology, and “to make it a space for all of us”. She knows how important education is, especially to a girl.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 12 August 2019

Photo: Polonnaruwa Road near Punani, a small hamlet in Sri Lanka’s Batticaloa district. CC BY-SA 3.0

An Aborted University and Squandered Opportunity in Sri Lanka

Viewpoint by Dr. Ameer Ali

A modern Muslim university is an absolute need of our time, and it will be a sound first step to reform even the madrasas eventually, writes Dr. Ameer Ali, a lecturer in economics at the School of Business and Governance, Murdoch University, Western Australia. The aborted university project in Punanai, a small hamlet in Sri Lanka’s Batticaloa district was a golden opportunity squandered by abuse of political power, subservience to Wahhabism and hunger for profit, he adds.

PERTH (IDN) – About three years ago when passing through Punanai along the arterial road between Habarana and Batticaloa in Sri Lanka, I noticed a few brick structures appearing in a parched land amid thick shrubs and woody trees. It was almost a desolate spot where I could not see any people living close by.

: Asia Editor; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 19 July 2019

Collage: Afghani teenager Turganbay Abdulbhakhidov with classmates in the background. Photos by Nurbek Bogachiev.

Afghani Teenager in Kyrgyzstan Plunges into Learning

By Bagymdat Atabaeva*

NARYN, Kyrgyzstan (IDN) – Turganbay Abdulbhakhidov is a 16-year-old teenager from Afghanistan who immigrated into Naryn region two years ago. His family used to make a living through cattle breeding in the Pamir mountains. Without electricity, proper medical services, educational institutions, and sustainable housing, these people live on the roof top of the world caught in a web of virtually no one’s land encompassing Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; THE WORLD; Central Asia; 17 July 2019

Photo: Monica Makona using her phone as if to get a loan. Credit: Kizito Makoye | IDN-INPS

Online Lending Firms Leave Digital Footprints in East Africa

By Kizito Makoye

DAR ES SALAAM (IDN) – When Monica Makona failed to obtain the bank loan, she badly needed to grow her business two years ago, she did not lose hope. Armed with her android smartphone, Makona tapped into TALA – a popular lending app she had previously downloaded – and within minutes she received the money.

"It was a very quick process, she told IDN in an interview, adding happily, “I received notification from TALA that 20,000 Tanzanian shillings (10 dollars) had been paid into my Tigo pesa mobile account."

: Africa & ME Editor; THE WORLD; Africa; 04 July 2019

Photo: Pupils at a public elementary school in Kwara State, Nigeria. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Nigeria Restores the Study of History in Public Schools

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – The government of Muhammadu Buhari is bringing back the teaching of history in all basic and secondary schools – ending a decade in which departments of history were dismantled or merged into other programs as having little earnings potential for the high school graduates. In a release signed by Sonny Echono, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, all basic and secondary schools in Nigeria immediately were to implement this policy from the next academic calendar.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 04 July 2019

Photo: Egyptian professor Dr Mohamed El-Guindy addressing the conference. Credit: David Robie.

Ethics Essential to Developing Global Smart Tech, Say Experts

By David Robie*

This feature is moved in association with the Pacific Media Centre in New Zealand.

BANGKOK (IDN) – Addressing the annual conference of Asian communication scholars, a leading cyber security expert has called on universities to play a more active role in implementing ethics and legal frameworks for communications smart technology to save society from an Orwellian future.

Dr Mohamed El-Guindy, an Egyptian consultant to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC-ROMENA), says communication research programmes should promote “ethically aligned” design.