Pakistan calls for “partnership in development” approach at UNESCO

Paris: Minister of State for Education, Trainings and Standards in higher Education, Mr. Baligh Ur Rehman has said that new agenda of development in Education, gender equality and other social sectors can not be met successfully without adopting different and need-based strategies for developing and developed countries. He was speaking at the 37th Session of UNESCO General Conference in Paris this evening. He lamented that most of the developing countries have failed to achieve MDGs because of wrong and inappropriate planning and approach. The emphasis, he said during previous planning has been on aid to developing countries, which, unfortunately did not work well for them.

He stressed that the plan of social development, especially education, should be based on economic growth and mobilisation of external financing of developing countries coupled with greater market access to in the form of lowering of trade barriers and transfer of technology. He pointed out that the people have to be part of process of development instead of being just beneficiaries of it. Therefore, he said, new goals should be “Human Development Goals” with equitability being the key word. He warned that without adopting new strategy the dream of bringing 72 million out-of-school children to school will remain a dream.

Earlier during the day he met Iranian Minister for Sciences, Research and Technology Mr. Reza FARAJIDANA and Indian Minister of State for Human Development, Mr. Shashi Tharoor to discuss matters of bi-lateral interest. Largely, the ministers agreed that the countries of the region had similar problem, issues and challenges in the fields of education and human development and that greater co-operation among them and benefitting from each others’ experiences could go a long way to achieve desired goals.Meanwhile Minister of State for Education Engineer Muhammad BalighurRehman called on Director General UNESCO Irina Bokova and exchanged views on mutual interest.