Proposition 54K1110

Proposition de résolution concernant les investissements de la Belgique dans l'éducation des filles dans les pays en développement.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Roel Deseyn, Els Van Hoof
LE Georges Dallemagne
MR Jean-Jacques Flahaux, Benoît Piedboeuf
N-VA An Capoen
Open Vld Nele Lijnen
PS | SP Gwenaëlle Grovonius
Vooruit Fatma Pehlivan

Submission date

May 26, 2015

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

resolution of parliament teaching adult education developing countries position of women

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE PS | SP DéFI ∉ Open Vld N-VA LDD MR PVDA | PTB PP VB

Party dissidents ¶

• Stéphanie Thoron (MR) abstained from voting.

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

June 28, 2017 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

I am pleased to refer to the written report.

Dear colleagues, I will be brief. Since a few people are getting rid of it, I will quickly get rid of it.

I would like to start with a quote from Nelson Mandela that I find appropriate. It is also the beginning of the resolution that I am proposing today. “Education is the most powerful weapon you have to change the world.” Education creates new opportunities but also creates economic growth and reduces poverty.

An important aspect that we should not ignore is education for girls, especially high-quality education. An additional effort in this area has a double effect and is rewarded as it were.

First, there is the impact on the girl, later the woman, herself. This ensures that she can make her own choices and that she will marry at a later age. This means fewer child marriages. They also have fewer children and there is less maternal death. Girls who enjoy education are also less likely to be victims of violence, both sexually and otherwise.

A second, very important point is that education also has an impact on society as a whole. The individual impact on the girl creates a giant shift on a global scale. It leads to less rapid population growth and an increase in economic growth, is better for the climate and promotes peace and democracy. In other words, it is a fundamental human right. However, it should be noted that although significant progress has been made in recent years, ⁇ in terms of access to education, there are still major challenges in terms of quality of education. There are still major problems, especially in the areas around the Great Lakes, a concentration area for our development cooperation.

Furthermore, since 2012 we have noticed that the major donors have increased. We also cut off. While education is a concentration sector for our development cooperation, we note that it is a priority sector in only four of the 14 partner countries. The number of indirect actors in the field of education is also rather limited. We have increased our budget for the Global Partnership for Education, and we have recently strengthened it, but additional efforts are still needed. Hence this resolution.

This resolution is also in line with the successive policy notes of Minister De Croo. Minister De Croo is always committed to women’s rights and always focuses on gender and girls in particular. This resolution is in line with the gender strategy of the Belgian Development Cooperation and the Agenda 2030.

I would like to thank the colleagues who contributed to the preparation of this resolution, both the colleagues of the opposition and those of the majority. This resolution came following a study trip to Cambodia. It was very useful to see on the spot how important education is and how important it is that we get those girls there from a young age. I would like to thank the colleagues, but I fear that most are no longer present.

In conclusion, I will repeat the call of this resolution.

We call on the government, of course in consultation with the counties, to increase the contribution for education in development cooperation, to pay sufficient attention to girls and especially to the quality of education, in the negotiations with our partner countries, and then especially with the new partner countries, to pay attention to education when choosing our priority sectors, to use the weight that Belgium has within the Global Partnership for Education to break an international lance for education and to continue to advocate internationally for ambitious educational goals within development cooperation, in view of the 2030 Agenda.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, this resolution was drafted following a mission organized in Cambodia in 2015 by Plan Belgium, where this NGO carries out real quality work, and in which my colleague Gwenaëlle Grovonius took part. During this mission, participants were able to see the benefits that significant investments in the education sector, especially for girls, can bring.

Unfortunately, in many countries, inequalities remain crying out. It is essential that girls have access to a genuine, well-organized education system, from an early age, so that they are protected from a range of related issues, including forced and early marriages.

More generally, education enables to address many challenges in terms of personal and human development, but also economic. Currently, the budgetary resources devoted to education by Belgium, in particular, are not up to these challenges and, in too many partner countries of development cooperation, this theme is unfortunately not a priority.

That is why it is important to ask the government to commit itself to a more active policy in this area, both on the budgetary level and by taking concrete actions on the ground. My colleague Gwenaëlle Grovonius also regretted that in the committee, despite our collegiality, several amendments of the majority have significantly reduced these budgetary ambitions.

In spite of this little hassle, I obviously welcome the fact that Belgium has demonstrated on many occasions, and over the years, its willingness to integrate itself into the Sustainable Development Goals and mainly Goals 4 and 5, which directly relate to gender and sexual and reproductive rights, which are priorities for my group.

I also welcome the fact that, at the level of parliamentary work, this text has shown a real collaboration between the majority and the opposition. As we also had, long ago, on the text from my group on the fight against early and forced marriages in the world, and more ⁇ in the partner countries of Belgian development cooperation.

These great themes, these great international battles deserve our joint work if we want to win it.

The work on these goals, in particular, as for the whole of the SDGs, remains enormous, as the backward positions taken by the Trump administration in the matter have shown. Although women and girls have benefited from progress in some areas since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals, gender inequalities remain a permanent challenge for all regions of the world and constitute a major systemic barrier to sustainable development in many respects. These advances go imperatively through the education of girls.

I will conclude by recalling that investing in gender equality and empowerment for all women and girls is not only an imperative of human rights; it can become one of the most effective leverages to fight poverty and thus make a significant contribution to sustainable development, both in its economic, social and environmental dimensions.

My group will therefore strongly support this text and, above all, ensure, as usual, control of the actions of our government in this matter.

Mr. Speaker, dear colleagues, I also wanted to confirm and strengthen the support that our group provides to this resolution proposal; one of our colleagues who is absent tonight, Jean-Jacques Flahaux, having been able to co-sign it.

This is a proposal for a resolution which, in our view, is extremely important and I fully agree with our colleague Mr. The explanations of Ms. Capoen.

I take advantage of this to welcome the action of Minister De Croo, whose decisions were an immediate reaction to the decisions made by the Trump administration. This is an extremely important struggle and the fact that the Democrats in this assembly can gather together on this text is an important element that should delight us.

We will vote on this text with great enthusiasm.