Topic: Access to Education
Country: Ghana
Delegate Name: Stephanie Banta
School: Forest Hills Eastern High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Ghana position papers GLIMUN 2010 committees
According to The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) “inclusive education is based on the right of all learners to a quality education that meets basic learning needs”. Even with the work of UNESCO and UNICEF there are still 75 million children that are excluded from education with 70 percent of those children living in Sub-Saharan Africa. Most countries within Africa do not make education accessible to all of their children and young adults because it seems to be too costly for their citizens or they restrict who can attend school by gender or religion. It has become evident that female are being denied their right to attending school along with families of a poorer background and families who keep their children home because of the dangerous trek their children would need to make to get to the school. If it is religion that is holding the females at home, families that are incapable of paying for education, or a lack of safety for attending school, it is Ghana’s belief that the United Nations needs to further work for providing education to all children so that nations can become more economically and socially stable and the standard of living globally can improve.
Ghana recognizes that we do not provide primary education to all citizens, mostly woman and girls. It is not that we are denying them access to basic education—boys and girls are encouraged by the Ghanaian government to start school around the ages of three or four—rather, it is the fact that in rural areas parents are uneducated about the abolished school fees and/or they prefer for their daughters to work at home due to personal needs or religious beliefs. As a nation Ghana wants the United Nations to educate families, in the more rural areas of nations, that sending their children to the public school is no longer a costly thing. In conjunction with that, Ghana would like the UN to help nations establish an incentive—such as the school providing a meal for the kids or a certain amount of money per year allowed to families who send their children to school—that would get families to want to send their children to school. Finally, Ghana would like to suggest that the UN also help in the establishment of all girls’ schools.
Similar to Ghana, other sub-Saharan countries are striving to find solutions to the lack of access to education. Uganda and Tanzania being two that are experiencing similar struggles as Ghana where they are working to provide universal access to primary education but are finding difficulties in reaching girls because of religious beliefs. Because of the shared interest in providing universal access to education, we believe that Uganda and Tanzania along with other African nations would be supportive in our proposal.
It is hard to determine if there would be countries against our proposal. We are aware of nations that do not believe in universal access for education such as Afghanistan because of the influence of groups such as the Taliban. But, we do not believe that these nations would prove to be detrimental to our proposal. On the other hand the nations that are centered on a religion that does not allow for girls to attend school could prove to be very much against our proposed ideas.
