In this opinion piece, Serigne Mbaye Thiam, Senegal’s Minister of Education and GPE’s Vice Chair, talks about the importance of education for all children in all countries.
DAKAR –January 24 is the first International Day of Education. It is a day of shared global responsibility, because every country has an obligation to ensure that all the world’s children get a good education, including the 262 million children and youth who currently do not attend school. But what exactly does shared responsibility entail?
Our first responsibility is to educate every child, especially the most marginalized among them, in our own countries, because this contributes to national development, prosperity, and stability. But we should also help to educate children beyond our borders, not only because each child has an inherent human right to education, but also because an educated global population yields benefits for our own countries.