Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-11-Speech-4-027"
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"en.20020411.2.4-027"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, now that we have this report – for which I should like to thank Mrs de Sarnez – the time is right for the European Union to reflect on what it means by the right to education, and more specifically higher education, and how it intends to implement this right. The twentieth century has seen human rights universally accepted as the main guiding force behind what we do. Our responsibility has to be to see them fully respected and put into practice, because education is not only an individual right; it is also an essential means of promoting peace – a crucial issue today – and ensuring respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in general.
If its potential for building a world of peace is to be realised, education needs to be widely available and made equally accessible to all. It is a huge task, but let us not forget that even today we live in a world where there are more than 800 million illiterate adults and almost 100 million children of secondary school age who do not have access to a school. Moreover, millions of those in school today are not able to benefit from high-quality teaching that meets their basic educational needs. It is therefore increasingly urgent for us to meet these needs in a world where the upheaval caused by globalisation and by the revolution in information and communication technology is marginalising entire peoples, who have been plunged into the most extreme poverty and who are easy prey for extremists of all kinds.
Making the right to education a reality is now less a question of access to education than of access to adequate training programmes for everyone so as to meet basic needs. From this point of view, the right to higher education is – on our own evidence – not yet a reality, in particular for women. Higher education shall, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit, but in Africa and Asia fewer than one person in ten in the age group concerned is in higher education, and the gulf is continuing to widen between these regions on the one hand and Europe and North America on the other. There is no doubt that considerable progress has been made in the last 50 years towards making the right to higher education a reality throughout the world, but we should not forget that this vision, which is laid down in Article 26, is not only quantitative but also qualitative because it encompasses the aims and objectives of education and thus its content.
Mindful of the task which remains to be accomplished – and with repeated thanks to Mrs De Sarnez for her report – I therefore think that it is essential, as far as those who are still excluded from any form of education are concerned, for us to be aware that it is not a question of choice, but that a great many people do not even know that they have a choice. If we are talking about dignity, demands, and equal and inalienable rights, I hope from the bottom of my heart that this report will enable the European Parliament to continue to fight for these things and that it will not stop fighting when the battle is only half won."@en1
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