The Director-General attends the UN General Assembly

• © UN Photo/Cia Pak

Thursday in New York, UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura attended the Global Campaign for Education event at which a new coalition was launched to galvanize action towards achieving the Education for All Goals by the target date of 2015. The event follows the White House Literacy Symposium earlier this week at which the UN Literacy Decade Fund was launched with a $2 million grant from the United States.

The Director-General's visit to New York this week has entailed a series of High-level events:

21 September:

• Meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

22 September:

• White House Symposium on Advancing Global Literacy: At the Symposium, Mr Matsuura also announced that Mrs Bush has accepted his invitation to continue to serve as Honourary Ambassador for the Decade through to its conclusion to 2012. Mrs Bush has held this distinction since the Decade was launched in 2003.
  • Read the press release
  
  
  • Read the Director-General's speech at the Symposium
  
  
  • More on the event



• Luncheon hosted by US First Lady Laura Bush



• High-Level meeting on Africa’s development needs

• Meeting of the five UN agencies responsible for the Education For All (EFA) programme



• Hosted lunch on “Financing Education for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)”: "UNESCO will spare no efforts in working with the Alliance of Civilizations to make full use of the power of dialogue to transcend differences," said Mr Matsuura
  • Read the Director-General's address



• Presented the Mawlana Jalal-ud-Din Balkhi-Rumi medal to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan: "Under your leadership, the Afghan government has made education the cornerstone of national reconstruction and development," said Mr Matsuura.

24 September:

• Side event hosted by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Spain on the MDG Achievement Fund:
  • More on the UNDP/Spain MDG Achievement Fund

• Acted as rapporteur in Roundtable on Education and Health


• Global Coalition for Education event: Mr Matsuura spoke at the launch of a new multi-stakeholder partnership that will build the political will to achieve the EFA goals by 2015. GCE partners pledged $4.5 bn to the cause. “Today must go down as a day of real commitment,” Mr Matsuura said, adding that “the current economic slowdown and financial crisis cannot be a pretext for reneging on the fight against poverty.”
  • Read the press release
  • GCE website

• 21-09-2008

• Photo 2: © White House/Chris Greenberg - Mrs Laura Bush with the Director-General
• Photo 3: © Fiorenti -