Launching the possible dream.

Filling out a form, understanding a prescription, obeying a traffic sign or helping children with homework can be anxiety-ridden experiences for over one quarter of the world's adult population-the estimated 965 million people over 15-who cannot read or write.

But there is hope now. Millions may soon be able to lead fuller lives thanks to a massive, United Nations-backed effort to reduce global illiteracy. The decadelong campaign, spearheaded by the launching of International Literacy Year (ILY) in 1990 may well signal the beginning of the end of the long night of illiteracy throughout the world.

Good news accompanied the launching of the Year on 6 December 1989 at UN Headquarters in New York: for the first time, it was reported, the absolute number of illiterates in the world had begun to decline.

"The rate of illiteracy in the adult population has declined from an estimated 40 per cent in 1960 to 28 per cent in 1990", announced Federico Mayor, Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the lead agency for UN anti-illiteracy efforts. He said that if this trend persists, "the number of adult illiterates will fall by 23 million between now and the end of the century". Due to a growing world population, this number had increased in past years.

UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who officially launched the Year, called illiteracy "a major concern" of the world Organization. For nearly 1 billion women and men-the illiterate adults of the world-the "right to education proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not yet a reality", he said.

What ILY is about The aims of the Year are "to boost literacy efforts around the world and to put literacy high up on the development agenda," said Colin N. Power, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Education. More than 80 national committees have been formed to carry out the work of ILY.

According to UNESCO, the Year's main objective is to set in motion a world-wide movement for literacy as part of a 10-year Plan of Action (1990-1999). Mr. Mayor explains: "The message of International Literacy Year, then, is that education matters and matters greatly. Literacy is the vehicle of education-the means through which ideas, information, knowledge an wisdom are expressed and exchanged.'

The Plan of Action is based on regional programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean, in Africa, in Asia and the Pacific, and in Arab countries-areas which account for 98 per cent of the world's illiterates. These UNESCO-supported projects are especially concerned with women, who represent two thirds of the world's illiterate population, and with the least-developed countries which suffer from declining primary school enrolments.

Another ILY target is the millions of functionally illiterate adults in industrialized countries.

The strategy for the Year is "two-pronged": universal primary education for children to deter future illiteracy on one hand; and programmes for illiterate adults on the other.

China and India account for well over half of the world's illiterate population. In 1990, China will launch a major national literacy campaign designed to reach 80 million illiterates.

The Indian Government plans to spend $2 billion to help 80 million illiterate adults in the 15-35 age range become literate by 1995. The programme will focus on the rural areas, particularly upon women an those belonging to lower castes and tribes. Half of India's adults are estimated to be illiterate, of a total population of some 819 million.

A collective effort

UNESCO says "a network of partners" must be created if the Literacy Year is to fulfil its goals. "If universal literacy is going to be achieved, it requires an enormous collective enterprise involving governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations NGOs), as well as millions of communities and individuals around the world", Mr. Power said. A number of UN specialized agencies-the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme, the International Labour Organisation, the Universal Postal Union, and the World Health Organization-have devoted areas of their work to fighting illiteracy. The International Task Force on Literacy was initiated by the Canada-based International Council for Adult Education ICAE) in 1987 as an umbrella group for NGOs participating in the Year. The ICAE President, Dame Ruth Nita Barrow, Permanent Representative of Barbados to the United Nations, said: "The freedom an illiterate person experiences on becoming literate is a unique one. There is a liberation of energy, creativity, and opportunity which gives a lasting boost to the human condition."

In May 1989, media organizations from all over the world met at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, to determine how they could best participate in the Year. One Japanese newspaper, Yomiuri, has launched a campaign to collect "a yen per illiterate" in Asia and the Pacific-a total of 666 million yen ($5 million)-to be directed to literacy projects in the region.

UNESCO as catalyst

Mr. Power described UNESCO's effort as "essentially that of catalyst, mediator and expert" in the fight against illiteracy.

Active in promoting literacy since 1946, UNESCO helps its 158 Member States formulate and implement literacy strategies. It also provides advisory and training services, and occasional support for pilot projects or experimental components within national programmes.

Each year on 8 September-International Literacy DayUNESCO awards several literacy prizes. In 1989, they went to groups in Nigeria, Mauritania, Jamaica and Indonesia, whose work ranged from using traditional culture to creation of innovative literacy programmes to teaching prison inmates how to read and write.

The UNESCO Co-Action Programme carries out some 100 small grassroots level projects in developing countries. Co-Action repairs primary schools in Kenya, Mali, Nepal and Peru, equips literacy centres in Burkina Faso, Lebanon and Sierra Leone, and helps national organizations for the blind in 26 countries buy Braille equipment.

Since 1966, the organization's Special Account for World Literacy has raised almost 1 million. Recent projects include a training seminar for semi-literate women in China to enable their participation in income-generating activities; support to NGOs doing literacy work in the Congo, Senegal and Thailand; and promotion of library fellowship activities in Nicaragua and the United Republic of Tanzania.

"Education is essential to effective participation in modern societies, to being the subject of action, the actor, and not merely the audience, the receiver of action," said Mr. Mayor. "Education enables us to take our destiny into our own hands to fashion a better tomorrow. History, past and present, teaches us that those societies which have prized education and devoted themselves to its pursuit have flourished, whereas those who could not or did not, have paid dearly for their neglect."

Goals of

Literacy Year

Action by Governments to eliminate illiteracy and functional illiteracy, targeting in particular rural areas and urban slums, women and girls, and populations with special educational needs.

* Public awareness of illiteracy and ways to combat it.

* Popular participation, within and among countries, and co-operation and solidarity among Member States and with the UN system in the struggle against illiteracy.

* Launching the Plan of Action for the eradication of illiteracy by the year 2000.