KABUL (PAN): Afghanistan has set an ambitious target to decrease its illiteracy rate from 74 percent to 50 percent in the next five years, a UN official said on Monday.
Only about 26 percent of the population over 15 years old can read and write, with that number falling to 12 percent where woman are concerned, Shigeru Aoyagi, representative of the UN's education and culture unit, UNESCO, said
However, Afghanistan has set a target to increase that to 50 percent by 2015, he said.
To mark international literacy day on September 8, a number of projects will be launched across the country. This year's motto will be "educated women, educated society", Aoyagi said.
More than 228,000 people, 60 percent of them women, will benefit from the new programmes, to be funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
Aoyagi said insecurity was the biggest challenge to ensuring everyone had access to education.
"We are also trying to launch literacy programmes in insecure parts of Afghanistan," he said.
Hi, I am the source.
Even Adobe Photoshop can't change me.
A line[Durrand line] of hatred that raised a wall between the two brothers -Hamid Karzai
For generations, the Hindus of India prayed for deliverance from "the venom of the cobra, the teeth of the tiger and the vengeance of the Afghan."
The men of Kábul and Khilj also went home; and whenever they were questioned about the Musulmáns of the Kohistán (the mountains), and how matters stood there, they said, "Don't call it Kohistán, but Afghánistán; for there is nothing there but Afgháns and disturbances." Thus it is clear that for this reason the people of the country call their home in their own language Afghánistán, and themselves Afgháns. The people of India call them Patán; but the reason for this is not known. But it occurs to me, that when, under the rule of Muhammadan sovereigns, Musulmáns first came to the city of Patná, and dwelt there, the people of India (for that reason) called them Patáns—but God knows!
-Ferishta, 1560–1620
Afghanistan to improve literacy rate -
09-08-2010, 12:22 AM
Linear Mode
