A reinforced UNESCO-EU partnership for Education
During a recent visit to Paris, the European Commissioner for International partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen, met with the Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay to reaffirm the European Union’s (EU) commitment in favor of teacher training, vocational education and training and girls’ education.
Education is central to the UNESCO-EU partnership. In 2021, UNESCO and the EU have been working better together to restructure the aid architecture on education through the Global Education Cooperation Mechanism (GCM), which will create an overall enabling environment for acceleration towards SDG 4, notably by improving the availability and use of related data, drive financing mobilization and improve alignment of all stakeholders. Quality education for girls and boys and skills for youth is the basis of human development and will be at the core of a strengthened partnership between UNESCO and the EU.
This meeting was also an opportunity to reiterate one of the common global priorities shared by UNESCO and the EU: Africa. In the coming weeks, the two partners will therefore deepen the discussions to determine potential activities to reinforce their joint commitment to promote education in Africa.
The current project called “Strengthening Teaching in the Sahel Region” implemented by UNESCO and funded by the EU, aims to strengthen teacher qualifications, policy, management and training to improve learning outcomes for children. This is one example of concrete collaboration between the two institutions that could be reinforced through various initiatives in the coming months.