Alex Matthew, representing The Guardian in the Press Committee at OxfordMUN 2020, won the Best Position Paper award for his paper ‘A Decade of Action’.
Decade of Action
“It's not that I’m so smart. But I stay with questions much longer” - Albert Einstein. This quote
sums up all the discoveries that the human species has acquired over millions of years; from the
discovery of fire to the light bulb, the theory of relativity and now artificial intelligence, we have
made it all happen. But for all of this to ever have happened, humans had to question and for us
to question, we had to learn. The process of one's learning has evolved and changed heavily
during its long and heavy course but one thing still remains constant - there is no learning
without education. For everything that us humans have discovered, there was always a bit of
education involved. But the sad truth is there are still people that do not have access to any
source of proper education. Roughly over two hundred million children and teenagers do not
attend school, which is more than the population of every country that is not named China, India,
Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan or The United states of America. What makes this statistic worse is
that a large amount of these children are from sub-Saharan Africa and with the current pandemic,
at least five hundred million people do not have the financial stability to afford or gain access to
education. Therefore making this the prime objective of change for the UN.
As of 2015, 91% of all children have been able to be enrolled in educational institutions in
developing countries. Though this might be seen as an astonishing achievement, the remaining
nine percent can be translated to almost fifty seven millions primary-education aged children
with almost half of them being from the sub-Saharan desert. This is exacerbated as one in four
girl children do not have access to education. Reasons for their restriction to knowledge include
child marriages, lack of funding, early pregnancy and even due to the fact that they simply are
girls as many families in the African continent do not encourage their studies. And for all this to
reduce to the point where there are no more education deprived children, The United Nations has
to make big leaps to provide education for these families. Though this might seem like a mighty
task, we have previously witnessed some miracles performed by the UN and therefore this
sustainable goal is not far-fetched.
During recent years, The United Nations were making amazing progress in supplying education
to once education restricted children. But then things took a turn for the worse as the rise of the
Corona Virus and the disease it carried - Covid 19 - to rain down a pandemic and a global
lockdown. This was a heavy blow to the progress the UN made as students were not allowed to
be in physical contact with each other and therefore the medium of school cannot be risked
opening. This has caused an uprise in the number of children out of school and that is estimated
to be more than five hundred million. The pandemic has led to 90% of all students to be kept
outside schools which in turn causes them to lose years of quality education (the knowledge they
acquire might be accurate due to online learning).
Education, in my opinion, is one of the most crucial elements we humans can gain access to, as
the benefit of proper education results in a variety of amazing gifts. Goal number four, of the
United Nations sustainable development goals, is one of the very few goals that when achieved
can simultaneously help achieve other goals which include reduction of poverty, gender equality
and climate change. Education is a key priority that once achieved will help an individual to earn
wages, have basic knowledge of almost everything and recognise the rights and wrongs in
society. The need for gender equality and community that strives for it have been a very
demanding one, and educating children at a young age can help them acknowledge these rights
as well as eradicate the existence of many stereotypes that have been made by society and
culture. And now due to this global crisis named ‘ The Covid Outbreak’, the need for knowledge
is specially required, not only for the discovery of a proper vaccine, but also the common
understanding of the virus and how this knowledge helps to restrict ourselves from becoming
victims to this monstrosity of a disease.
The need for education and public accessibility of it has been a prime target of The United
Nations ever since its existence and they have been working towards it from day one. But there
are still millions of children that are still illiterate and therefore this must be the United nations
most important objective as education not only provides understanding, but also opportunities for
children, that later open up more opportunities for the future generation which we will one day
have to rely upon and for this we have to strive individually and as a larger body.
Alex Mathew ,
The Guardian
