Desmond Tutu calls on G8 to school world’s children

Nobel peace prizewinner and former archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel laureates and human rights activists have called for world leaders to set up a global education fund. Hundreds of millions of young children and teenagers can’t go to school and about 770-million adults still can’t read or write, they said.

Archbishop Tutu, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and Professor Muhammad Yunas, founder of the Grameen Bank, have written to Gordon Brown, President Barack Obama and the other G8 leaders who are due to hold a summit in Italy next week. They're asking them to honour a pledge to provide at least $2 billion to create a global fund for education by the end of this year. Their letter asks the leaders to "save the world's children from paying with their lives for our financial mistakes" by creating a new global fund for education. "Education is the key to unlocking inter-generational deprivation, as it offers the knowledge people need to live healthy, happy lives," the letter said. "By investing in education, the G8 can leverage huge returns in women's and children's health, nation- and peace-building, and global economic development now and in the future," they write."At this critical time, millions of children are dropping out of school to join the labour market, governments are being forced to cut their education budgets and total aid commitments to basic education are dropping at an alarming rate."

The fund would be aimed at reversing a global decline in aid to education in the poorest countries. This in turn would improve health in these countries, Tutu told journalists in a conference call from Washington. There are long-range benefits, he highlighted. Girls, who become mothers after having five years of formal education, are much more likely to have healthier children. "It's a fantastic return on that investment," says Tutu. A child is 40% more likely to live beyond five years old if its mother has had a basic education, he said. At least 700,000 new cases of HIV could be prevented each year if all the children in the world had a classroom to study in, he added.

Tutu said that the current state of international aid to education as "doleful". The children out of school across the world were not just "sets of figures, but flesh and bones", he said. "The world has reneged on the promises it had made to help those most in need. We are certainly failing the world's most vulnerable children. Gordon Brown, in particular, must join Obama in giving the world's children "hope that a better life is available to them", Tutu said.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children