Collective action of global community needed to combat terrorism

Excerpts of the Country Statement presented by Susil Premajayantha, Minister of Education, Representative of Sri Lanka to the Executive Board at the 179th Session of the Executive Board of UNESCO.

Sri Lanka has recently brought out a National Policy on Education for Social Cohesion and Peace Education, which takes into account all sustainable development issues, which was launched on 27th March 2008.

Teacher training, monitoring, and the assessment of the implementation of the action plan, are key to its success.

These initiatives are in keeping with the Ahmedabad Declaration 2007: A call to action on Education for Life; Life through Education.” If we are to succeed in our efforts at providing quality education for all, we need to translate the global and regional initiatives, into action at the national level.

Furthermore, together with the allocation of extra resources the efficient spending of such resources is more important. A question to be asked is, how much of the resource allocations are actually expended by the concerned administrations? Are there duplications in donor funding to NGO’s?

In our attempts to enhance quality education, we are paying attention to strengthening the human resources capacity in the use of ICT’s and the use of English as a link language.

Climate Change is an issue which is very high on the agenda of the international community. This is very timely and rightly so. We need to focus on this important issue and act now and act fast, in order to arrest the unfavourable repercussions so that we leave a planet that is not hostile to our future generations.

UNESCO, with its wide cross cutting mandate, could play a defining role, particularly through its inter-sectoral Programmes, including through the Education for Sustainable Development initiatives.

On the subject of Basic Sciences, the development of mobile laboratories, to supplement the central laboratory facilities that are currently available in the schools, will be a way forward to taking Science to the villages.

This will encourage the learning of theory, along with practical work that could be related to the assets base at grass roots levels, particularly in the developing countries.

UNESCO has the constitutional mandate to defend the freedom of expression and the freedom of the media which are principles cherished and valued by the entire international community.

However, we need to be aware that these noble principles could be abused by undesirable elements that could operate under the cover of this freedom.

Hence, the UNESCO Secretariat need to exercise caution when formulating positions and, when expressing views on issues concerning member states, due to the complex nature of some of the issues.

Democratically elected sovereign governments today have to face many challenges such as globalization, terrorism, alleviation of poverty, natural disasters etc.

In the context of a globalized society we need to focus on working together to face these challenging issues which affects all mankind.

Sri Lanka has been grappling with the scourge of terrorism for nearly three decades. It was recently that my colleague the Minister for Highways and Road Development and 14 other innocent civilians were assassinated by a ruthless suicide cadre of the Tamil Tiger terrorist outfit, the fourth Member of Parliament to be assassinated this year by the Tamil Tigers. We call upon for the collective action from the International Community to combat this common global threat.

As regards the “Delivering as One” the UN teams should work at the country level, not only on the programming aspect, but also at the level of actual implementation. Pilot programmes should be encouraged each year in the respective countries, with close scrutiny by the Chief Executives Board and the UN Development Group, in order to strengthen this process.

Turning to management issues, within UNESCO a more proactive staff management plan including staff rotation should help in maintaining and enhancing expertise.

However, we wish to caution that short-term assignments should be earmarked mostly for emergency situations and project work and not for assignments to duty stations, since field work necessitates experience and time to absorb and deliver, at the national and regional levels.

Inspiring the staff to motivate themselves and at the same time exercising strict control on the periods of absence of staff from the duty stations, is necessary to enable to better concentration of efforts at managing, delivering and implementing the organisations programmes.