International Donors Pledge $1 Billion For Universal Education In Pakistan

The United Nations will donate $1 billion to Pakistan over the next three years to provide education to more than 7 million out-of-school children, said Special Envoy on Global Education Gordon Brown over the weekend.

Speaking at an education forum at the Jinnah Convention Centre in Islamabad, the former British prime minister said that the money had come from international donors and would go towards funding the biggest education expansion in the country’s history.

The United Nations will donate $1 billion to Pakistan over the next three years to provide education to more than 7 million out-of-school children, said Special Envoy on Global Education Gordon Brown over the weekend.

Speaking at an education forum at the Jinnah Convention Centre in Islamabad, the former British prime minister said that the money had come from international donors and would go towards funding the biggest education expansion in the country’s history.

“What we are hoping is that the Pakistan government can then backup this announcement by giving their own timetable for raising expenditure on education from two percent of national income to four percent,” Brown said, as cited by ChannelNewsAsia.

[quote]“If we can do both these things, that is raise the amount the Pakistan government spends and, as I promised them, increase the money coming from the International Community, then we could get every child to school very quickly.”[/quote]

Pakistan has the second highest number of children out of school in the world – over seven million, of which four million are girls. Under the United Nations Global Education Programme, Brown said that the target was to achieve education for all by December 2016.

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Experts ChannelNewsAsia spoke to however say that reforms are hard to achieve in reality.

“There are many problems with aid giving,” said Ali Nabi Noor from the Society for the Protection and Advancement for Rights of the Child. “The systems have to be transparent. There has to be responsibility taken up by necessary stakeholders.

[quote]“But the good thing about any form of education development, which is why education development is so important, is that the… effects benefit the system as a whole.”[/quote]

Brown noted that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government has made the commitment of doubling the education budget and increasing enrolment to achieve millennium development goals.