Women, Literacy and Health

The world on Monday (Sep 8) has observed the International Literacy Day. The day reminds the importance of literacy to the world community since its inception in 1965. This occasion too underlines the government efforts to improve the level of education and further efforts in making education available to all section.

With an aim to disperse the message of literacy to children and youth, individuals and communities, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisations (UNESCO) proclaimed International Literacy Day on November 17, 1965. Since then UNESCO has constantly been working on improving the status of literacy and adult learning across the globe.

Every year the International Literacy Day is celebrated under a special theme; the celebration theme for the year 2007 was “Literacy and Health.” The year 2008 too, has been determined to give special focus on the linkage between “Literacy and Health.”

Strong emphasis will be carried on literacy and epidemics with a focus on communicable diseases such as HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria, some of the world's most important public health concerns.

The worldwide slogan “Literacy is the best remedy” emphatically marks the connection between prevention of diseases and a literate population.

Since its inception spreading and promoting of literacy had been the centrestage of UNESCO. But, the global literacy rate remarkably accelerated in 1990 when the United Nations General Assembly declared the year as International Literacy Year.

A decade later in 2000, various governments across the world under the aegis of UNESCO and with its several agencies outlined the functioning of literacy in four distinct ways: Education for All; the Millennium Development Goals; the United Nations Literacy Decade and; the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.

Education for All (EFA): The world education forum in 2000 in Dakar, adopted the Dakar framework for action, 'Education for All: Meeting our collective commitments' which sets six internationally agreed education goals aim to meet the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015. Government, development agencies, civil society, non-government organisations and the media are the associating partners of UNESCO working towards reaching these goals.

Millennium Development Goals: During the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, eight goals such as eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, developing a global partnership for development and so on were decided to be achieved by 2015. The MDG acknowledged that development rests on the foundations of democratic governance, the rule of law, respect for human rights and peace and security. Its target is that children everywhere, boys and girls alike, complete a full course of schooling by 2015.

The United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD): Under the theme of the decade (2003-2012) “Literacy as Freedom” the UN General Assembly launched the programme spearheaded by UNESCO to mobilise the resources and political will to fulfill the learning necessities of the illiterate people.

The United Nations decade of education of sustainable development (2005-2014): To integrate the principles, values and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning, the UN General Assembly declared the decade 2005-2014 as Decade of Education of Sustainable Development. It hoped that this educational effort would encourage changes in behaviour that thus would help in creating more sustainable future in terms of environment integrity, economic viability and a just society.

Apart from these four goals, the governments across the globe have launched several other educational missions to make its people literate.

India, too, has been constantly working on making people literate through manifold development programmes, such as National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, National Rural Health Mission, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.

Education and literacy—the foundation and essence of all human development—confers a wide set of benefits on individuals, families and communities ranging from social, economic, political and human benefits.

Literacy does not mean signing one's name and learning a few letters of the alphabet. All these four benefits will never accrue if literacy is confined to just signing and recognising alphabets rather literacy in true sense means to enable the people to understand their situations; situations of communities, societies. Literacy means to enable people to work for the upliftment of oneself and others. It means to generate organisational energy and catalyse social action.

Moreover, our special efforts should be directed towards extending the power of literacy to women who currently constitute two-thirds of the illiterates in the world.

Educate to one male means 'one' merely, but educate to women and girls means 'all around development.' For bringing social change and for the development of society, too, our special efforts should be to educate women.

An educated mass is necessary to address issues like growing population, maternal mortality, fighting social evils and creating a population aware of their rights and duties. Literacy readiness is also necessary to carry forward the national agenda and to contribute productively to a knowledge based society.