Global-Literacy Work at UNESCO Undergoes Shake-Up
Activities and jobs cut; resources shifted from Paris to regional offices.
The primary international organization supporting global literacy is reorganizing its education sector and decentralizing its extensive literacy operation, with the aim of strengthening that work in the world’s neediest countries.
But while the attempt to improve the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s education division has earned widespread support among member nations and experts in the field, a recent shakeup in its leadership, dissatisfaction over the restructuring process, and uncertainty about how the changes will play out have generated worries over UNESCO’s capacity for advancing the cause of universal literacy.
“The first point all [international-development and -literacy experts] agree on is that there was a need for change, and the whole notion of devolving much more responsibility for action to the regional centers is not at all a bad idea,” said Alan E. Farstrup, the executive director of the Newark, Del.-based International Reading Association. “The basic concept of reform was fairly reasonable,” he added, but “the reform process was handled in what I would call a very...
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