Haiti Libre

Thursday, April 18, Michaëlle Jean, the UNESCO Special Envoy for Haiti, will take part in Washington, at ministerial meetings of the World Bank (WB) and of International Monetary Fund (IMF) devoted to “Learning for All”.

The Ministers of Education and Finance of Haiti, of Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Yemen and South Sudan are invited in the U.S. capital to discuss the challenges they face and steps to be taken to open the doors of their institutions of learning for all young people. These eight countries gather only them, half of the world’s children who do not go to school.

Madame Jean will participate in the round table dedicated to Haiti, alongside the Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe of Vanneur Pierre, Minister of National Education (both in official visit to the United State), Mrs. Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO and Gordon Brown, the Special Envoy of the United Nations for global education. “Haiti has made ​​immense progress in net enrollment ratio, which ose from 64% in 1997 to 88% in 2011,” declared Mrs. Jean “But the country is still far from achieving the Millennium Development Goals for education, whose the deadline was set in 2015 by the United Nations. Haiti needs a major mobilization of human and financial resources, with the support of all its partners for the implementation of the operational plan to provide access to school for all children.”

The Haitian Government recommends several actions to support the educational system, including the construction of elementary schools, the training of 50,000 teachers and staff of the administration, and the funding of school canteens for 200,000 new children.

The participants of the round table will discuss the main obstacles that prevent universal education in Haiti and the measures that can be adopted to promote learning for all. They will focus on the bottlenecks that delay the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Without education, thousands of children will be forced to remain in poverty. Haiti has an urgent need to increase the level of skills, knowledge and professional skills required to carry out the economic recovery, the reconstruction and sustainable development.