Emmy Fitri, Jakarta – The Education For All (EFA) Global Action Week will be held internationally through the last week of April, the work of various groups wanting to drum up support for the right to education.
Titled "Education is a Human Right", this year's EFA Global Action Week is regarded as particularly important because 2007 marks the half-way point of the 15 year period set by 164 countries when they signed the EFA Commitment in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000.
Education rights group Kapal Perempuan's national coordinator Yanti Muchtar said the week of action was well-timed to remind the government and the people that education was a basic human right.
"ECOSOC (economic, social and cultural) rights are just taken for granted here. We heard a piece of news about a student who committed suicide because he could not afford to pay tuition fees. Because it concerned only one person, we failed to respond properly to the bigger problem behind the suicide," Yanti said.
Yanti said the Indonesian government had signed the EFA Commitment but was yet to show progress in delivering the services the document promised.
"There are six goals in the EFA, one of them is the availability of qualified and free of charge primary education. This primary education must be accessible for all children by 2015 regardless their ethnic or household income group. In reality, we haven't seen good quality education provided in primary schools that are accessible for school-age children," she said. "There already some free-tuition policies in some schools but parents must still bear the additional costs of uniforms, transportation expenses and workbooks."
Government data show that the enrollment rate for primary students reached 98 percent this year, Yanti said, but many overlooked the increasing drop-out rate and adult illiteracy numbers.
Photo exhibitions, a rally at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, seminars and a meeting with lawmakers are among activities planned be held in Jakarta during the week.
Global Action Week was initiated by the Global Campaign on Education (GCE), an international network of non-governmental groups established in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000. The GCE monitors progress made by countries that signed the EFA declaration.
Meanwhile, UNESCO's Asia Pacific Regional Bureau for Education spokesman Shaeffer Sheldon said poverty, cultural and social barriers, wars and ignorance have come between governments providing education and child and adults.
Shaeffer told a gathering of journalists in Hanoi, Vietnam, over the weekend that education as a human basic right has not been viewed as an important investment for a better future by many countries, but there were a variety of reasons behind such a perspective.
"On the millennium, in the year 2000 in Dakar, your governments, with strong global support, agreed on the provision of free and universal education, however, still today, seven years on, the commitment has gone answered," Shaeffer said when closing the three-day workshop on education.
Globally there are 77 million children who do not attend primary school; more than 9 million of those children live in East Asia.
"In this region, children are left out of school due to poverty or disability, or because they live in remote areas or speak a language different from that used in school, or simply because they are girls,"
"Time is running out. The 2015 target for the EFA goals and the Millennium Development Goals is getting close. All of us must work together with a sense of urgency to ensure that all children, youth and adults have access to good quality education," Shaeffer said.