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Home > GWANC 2006 Conference > Background Papers
The Global Women's Action Network for Children 2006 Conference
Background Papers
Accelerating Reductions in Maternal and Newborn Mortality: Challenges and Opportunities
Across most of the industrialized world, a woman’s pregnancy typically is a period of great joy and elation, and usually culminates in the celebration of a cherished new life. Yet for hundreds of millions of women, particularly those in developing countries, pregnancy presents great perils and risks, often evoking substantial fear and even despair. Millions of those pregnancies and childbirths each year result in serious health problems, even life-long disabilities for the mothers-to-be. For far too many pregnancy leads not only to their own death, but also to the death of their newborn and, at times, even their older children.
Promoting Girls’ Education: Where Do We Stand
and How Do We Move Forward?
Behind almost all politicians there are women in the shadows.
An anonymous writer, Modern Khmer News, 1954
Despite longstanding global commitments, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of Universal Primary Education remains elusive for too many countries, and for girls in particular. Six years after the Dakar Forum held in 2000, about 100 million children are still not enrolled in primary school, 55 percent of them are girls. One in five of all primary school age children in the world is not in school. To date only 47 countries have achieved universal primary education (UPE) out of 163 with available data. UNESCO estimates that out of 90 countries with the relevant data only 20 are on track to achieve UPE by 2015, 44 are making good progress but are unlikely to achieve the UPE by 2015, and 23 are at risk of not achieving UPE by 2015. Primary education completion rates clearly demonstrate that not all children reach the last grade of primary school. The problem is particularly acute in Sub-Saharan Africa, but also severe in Cambodia, India, Nepal and a few countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.” In addition, the achievement of UPE is hampered by high repetition rates. More than 15 percent of children in more than half the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, Guatemala, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mauritania, Morocco and Nepal repeated a primary school grade in 2002.
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