EFA: a distant goal: Over half of world's children out of school are from minorities or indigenous peoples

LINK: http://www.minorityrights.org

16 July 2009

 

New global report Of the world's 101 million children out of school, between 50 and 70 per cent are from minorities or indigenous peoples, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) says in a new report released today.

The State of the World's Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009 details how minority and indigenous children have been systematically excluded, discriminated against, or are too poor to afford an education.

In developing countries with the largest number of children out of school, such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan minority and indigenous populations enjoy far less access to schooling than majority groups.

MRG's flagship annual report, prepared this year with UNICEF's collaboration, says that the Millennium Development Goal on education will not be met in 2015 if policies are not properly targeted on the needs of minorities and indigenous peoples.

"Education authorities need to recognize that it is not just lack of resources that is keeping so many children out of school worldwide. Tens of millions of children are systematically excluded from school or receive only a second-rate education because of ethnic or religious discrimination," says Mark Lattimer, MRG's Executive Director.

Providing adequate education for minority and indigenous children is not a choice, but a legal obligation on the part of states, yet statistics reveal that the costs of failing to provide education for all are massive: holding back economic growth and sowing the seeds for inter-ethnic and inter-religious conflict.

In a Foreword to the report, the UN Independent Expert on Minority Issues, Gay McDougall, argues, "When I ask people who belong to disadvantaged minorities to tell me their greatest problem, the answer is always the same. They are concerned their children are not getting a quality education. Worldwide, minority children suffer disproportionately from unequal access to quality education."

The Chairperson of the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, John Henriksen, adds, "Deprivation of access to quality education is a major factor contributing to the social marginalization, poverty and dispossession of indigenous peoples. The content and objective of education in some instances contributes to the eradication of their cultures, languages and ways of life."

The report shows that in African countries such as Burundi, Rwanda and Sudan, exclusion from school and the lack of educational opportunities for young people have been critical factors in fuelling conflict over past decades.

The study cites numerous cases which demonstrate a world of exclusion and discrimination against minorities and indigenous peoples. The most discriminated against of all tend to be poor girls, living in poor families in rural areas who belong to a minority community. In Guatemala, for example, only 4 per cent of ‘extremely poor' indigenous girls attend school by the age of 16.

Globally, more than half of out-of-school girls have never been to school and might never go to school without additional incentives. The report finds that reducing the gender gap paves the way to a more democratic, balanced and stable society.

The report makes a number of key recommendations to address these significant inequities in education for minorities and indigenous peoples, including building more schools in rural communities, recruiting more local, bilingual and minority-language teachers and abolishing segregation in classes.