UNGEI Global Advisory Committee Meeting

12 – 13 November 2007, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris

Purpose of Meeting, Expected Outcomes and Key Documents

Purpose of Meeting

The United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) is a long-term inter-agency initiative that includes donors and civil society organisations, with UNICEF designated as the lead agency and serving as Secretariat. It was launched by the Secretary-General in April 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar. UNGEI’s goal is to improve the quality and availability of girls’ education in support of the gender-related EFA goals and MDGs – of eliminating the gender gap in primary and secondary education originally set for 2005, and ensuring that by 2015, all children, girls and boys alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling and have equal access to all levels of education. UNGEI is an integral part of the EFA movement, with the status of an EFA flagship.

UNGEI’s Global Advisory Committee (GAC) meets twice per year for shared planning, decision-making, guidance and accountability of UNGEI. This meeting, the second for 2007, will take place in two parts:

  • A Business meeting on Day One that will review progress against 2007 plans and set preliminary plans for the coming year. A joint working session with members of the UNAIDS Inter-Agency Task Team on Education, Global Task Forceon Child Labour and EFA,and Fast Track Initiative Secretariat will discuss collaboration for mainstreaming equity issues in country-level FTI processes.
  • A Technical meeting on Day Two that will examine the gender-related issues in the Global Monitoring Report 2008 (GMR, currently under embargo) and make pertinent recommendations to the Working Group on EFA (WGEFA) which will meet immediately thereafter and feed into the High Level Group (HLG) which will meet one month subsequently. A Technical paper will guide this discussion.

Three key themes will be considered by both WGEFA and HLG:

  • Equity: realizing the right to education and ensuring inclusion
  • Quality education and learning
  • Financing EFA: planning for adequate domestic and external allocations to basic education

Two cross-cutting themes will also be examined:

  • Fragile states
  • Neglected EFA goals

Expected Outcomes

Business Meeting

  • Pending items from previous meetingdiscussed and decided
  • Physical and financial implementation of the annual work plan reviewed
  • Initial plans outlined for 2008 work plan, including regional-level meeting in June/July and venue and theme for second GAC meeting
  • Selected UNGEI country experiences reviewed and good practices highlighted
  • GAC briefed on WGEFA meeting
  • Preliminary agreement reached with members of IATT, GTF and FTI Secretariat on collaboration for mainstreaming equity issues in country-level FTI processes

Technical Meeting

  • Inclusion of the most vulnerable girls and boys advocated
  • Holistic approaches to quality education identified to address salient disparities, especially discrimination against girls
  • Rigorous, gender-sensitive measurement of EFA goals advocated
  • Recommendations developed for EFA Working Group meeting

Key Documents

A number of background documents are available on the meeting web site: Nevertheless, there are some key documents that GAC members are requested to have reviewed prior to the meeting in order to facilitate discussion:

  • Draft Child Protection Policy
  • Secretariat mission report to ESAR (Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya)
  • Note on modalities for Regional level GAC meetings
  • Background paper on joint working session with membersof IATT, GTF, Disabilities flagship and FTI Secretariat on collaboration for mainstreaming equity issues in country-level FTI processes
  • Child Labour and Education Sector Plans, ILO Background Paper
  • IATT Assessment of the Responsiveness of Education Sector Plans to HIV and AIDS(IATT draft pending)
  • WVI report on integrating childhood disabilities into FTI and ESPs, Education's Missing Millions
  • Note on 8th meeting of the Working Group on EFA (14 - 16 November 2007)
  • Technical notes and statistical trends on gender issues in GMR 2008