Mayor Tells World Bank, IMF: Hands off Education

Unesco Director General Federico Mayor has told the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stop dabbling in educational matters, a area which fall outside their area of competence.

As the director general of Unesco I do not accept that the World Bank and the I.M.F. should continue to take decisions and make recommendations on issues in education in which they are not adequately informed.

They should concentrate on economics, banking and finance and leave education to Unesco and other agencies mandated to work in this domain, he told reporters in Durban.

He is in this South African port city attending the seventh African Education Ministers Conference, which entered its third day today.

The bank and the fund, institutions formed in Bretton Woods, have been involved in major decisions on education. For example they have been demanding the reducing in public funding to schools and the privatization of educational institutions, a measure allied and which have had a devastating impact in many African countries.

Both Bretton Woods institutions also issue periodical reports on education which, Mayor said, were often inaccurate.

Would it be appropriate for Unesco to start producing reports and taking decisions on global banking and finance matters,? he said.

The bank and the fund, he added, should consult Unesco on matters of education.

He said that the U.N. Human Rights Declaration emphasized the need for access to education to all based on merit and that he was happy that African ministers had agreed to make the Durban forum the springboard for indigenous education based on this criteria.

The future of Africa is now in the hands of Africans with the commitment of its ministers of sustain the impetus derived from Minedaf Seven , he said.

He urged African countries to rely more on internal resources for funding and improving education instead of depending on loans which imposed enormous constraints on these states.

We have to break this vicious cycle of loans and debts repayments, he said.

Brazil, India and South Africa, he said, had achieved much success through self-reliance and deserved emulation.

However, he decried the continued brain drain in Africa, pointing out that some 30,000 medical doctors from sub-Saharan Africa worked outside the continent.

He said Unesco had prepared an inventory of Africa facilities which could be used for learning and exchange programmes as well as the possibility of exchanging educational staff. These would be presented at the next World Conference on Higher Education October in Paris.