Dr. Obaid congratulated CTAUN for taking up the theme of Universal Literacy and said that in a very real sense, teachers were ambassadors on behalf of the UN. She told how she was the daughter of devout Moslem parents who took literally the first injunction of the Qu'ran, “Read.” So at seven, her father sent her away from her home in Saudi Arabia to a Presbyterian School in Egypt. Her parents did not mind her going from an Islamic Madrassa to a Christian Missionary School because they had made education the highest priority in her early life.
There are more than 800 million illiterate people in the world today. If you were to imagine there were only 100 people in the world, 15 of them would be illiterate and more than half of those would be women and girls. She said education is a source of light and hope. It helps people to understand the human condition and the diversity of cultures and civilizations. It is a great equalizer and a powerful tool of improving health and social well-being. It is the building block of democratic open societies.
As part of the UN's Millennium goals, world leaders had set the target of universal literacy by 2015, and by 2005 equal enrollment of boys and girls in primary schools. In developing countries, poverty and AIDS made it especially hard for children, especially girls, who so often suffered discrimination, to complete their education. UNFPA, which now operates in over 140 countries, is encouraging the teaching of Life Skills, which gives priority to teaching about sexual and reproductive health so as to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of AIDS. Everywhere Dr. Obaid has traveled, she finds that people yearn for the values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — education and health care, peace, justice, opportunity and equality. She said that we should all work together to promote these human rights and the universal values that unite us as one human family sharing one common globe.
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