Education needed in Sudan
2005-01-18 14:55
Rumbek - The United Nations is making education a priority in post-conflict southern Sudan, saying it is crucial to developing a region where school enrolment is among the lowest in the world and illiteracy at alarming rates.
"It seems to me the single most valuable thing you can give to the people of south Sudan is education," said Ben Parker, communications officer for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
"You can't run a country without educated people," he added.
On January 9, rebels and the government in Khartoum signed a final peace agreement in Kenya, ending Africa's longest conflict that had claimed at least 1.5 million people and displaced four million others over the past 21 years.
Education is a priority
The UN Security Council has promised to consider sending aid and even peacekeepers - reportedly as many as 7 000 troops - to keep the peace there.
The UN also says education is a priority, with enrolment at primary school as low as 20%, the second lowest in the world after Afghanistan.
With an estimated population of 7.5 million, the region also has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world, trailing the W
west African state of Niger, which has a literacy rate of 24%.
UNICEF says the statistics are particularly disturbing for women, with one out of 10 illiterate. Figures suggest that only one in 100 girls will complete primary school in southern Sudan -- the worst rate in the world.
In an effort to encourage girls' education, the UN agency has helped establish specialised girls' schools across southern Sudan which run three-year programmes before pupils are re-integrated into mainstream schools in the fifth grade.
A fact-finding study showed that many parents fear sending their daughters to school for security and cultural reasons, or because their girls may no longer have time to help with the housework.
UNICEF's specialised girls' schools in villages run for three hours a day, compared to between seven and eight hours in regular schools.
Only about seven percent of teachers in the south have any professional training, more than half of the schools are taught under a tree and some 1.5 million children that should be in school are not.
The war in the region erupted in 1983 when rebels from the mainly Christian and animist south took up arms to end years of domination by successive Islamic governments in Khartoum.