INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AGENCIES AND EDUCATION

bilateral agencies
andrew j. finch

regional institutions
andrew j. finch
katherine taylor haynes

united nations and international agencies
katherine taylor haynes
andrew j. finch

BILATERAL AGENCIES

An official bilateral development or aid agency is responsible to a single government. It is usually a ministry or part of a government ministry dedicated to advancing foreign policy goals while contributing to the economic and social development of recipient countries. This discussion will review the history, legacy, importance, and current role of some of the more important bilateral agencies with regard to education.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

As an agency within the U.S. State Department, the United States Agency for International Development's mandate includes assisting countries with disaster recovery, poverty reduction, and the expansion of democratic reforms. USAID education and training support activities fall within this mandate and cover six major areas: basic education, learning technologies, higher education, workforce development, participant training, and telecommunications reform and applications.

USAID's current efforts in basic education include activities such as the Demographic and Health Surveys Education Data for Decision-Making (DHS Ed Data), which builds on population-based demo-graphic surveys and provides data for planning and evaluation of education policies worldwide; the Global Education Database (GED), a computer-based database of international statistics; and Basic Education and Policy Support (BEPS). Learning technologies consist of activities such as Global Information Network in Education (GINIE). Higher education includes activities such as the Higher Education Partnerships and Development and Advanced Training for Leadership and Skills (ATLAS). Workforce development entails activities such as Global Workforce in Transition. Participant training includes activities such as Global Training for Development and the Training Resources and Information Network (TraiNet). Telecommunications reform and applications entail activities such as the Telecommunications Leadership Program.

USAID was created by executive order in 1961 when U.S. President John F. Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act. It was the first U.S. foreign assistance organization whose primary emphasis was on long-range economic and social development assistance efforts. The agency faced early criticisms fueled by opposition to the Vietnam War, concern that aid was too focused on short-term military considerations, and concern that aid, particularly development aid, was a giveaway program producing few foreign policy results for the United States. Thus in 1972 and 1973 the Senate rejected the foreign-assistance bill authorizing funds. In 1973 the House Committee on Foreign Affairs restructured aid to focus on "functional categories," including "education and human resources development." Since then, USAID has faced concerns about its administration and structure, and there have been multiple efforts to officially restructure the administration and control of the agency. In 1998 the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act placed the agency under the direct authority and foreign policy guidance of the secretary of state. In 2001 the George W. Bush administration reorganized USAID into three spheres of influence: global health, economic growth and agriculture, and conflict prevention and developmental relief. The second sphere captures most education funding.

USAID has continually tried to define its education policy. Policy papers from the mid-1980s established the priorities for USAID funding of "basic education and technical training." First, a 1982 statement proclaimed that "assisting countries to establish more efficient systems of education" was an essential component of an "effective development strategy." These efforts would include raising the levels of basic education and relating technical-training systems more effectively to productive employment. A 1984 paper stated the policy of improving primary education enrollment, program efficiency, and diversification of training. In the 1990s a USAID—higher education community consultation was designed (1) to enhance the U.S. foreign assistance program by incorporating the experience and knowledge of higher education institutions to develop better USAID policies, country and sector strategies, and activity designs and implementation; (2) to collaborate constructively in the delivery of development and humanitarian assistance when interests are compatible; and (3) to increase the transparency of USAID's decision and policymaking processes relevant to higher education institutions. In 1997 the agency released a strategic plan listing seven goals to support USAID's mission, the third of which was "to build human capacity through education and training." Still, the $7.7 billion total 2002 fiscal-year budget request allocated a mere 3 percent to education and training.

Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)

The Canadian International Development Agency assists in issues from health, education, and agriculture to peace building, governance, human rights, land mines, and information technology. CIDA works with a variety of partners, both inside and outside of Canada, and it supports projects in more than 150 countries. Partners include nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector, and academic institutions–in Canada and in recipient countries–as well as a number of international organizations and institutions. Some projects are run bilaterally, while others are carried out through multilateral organizations. According to CIDA, its primary objective regarding development assistance is "to support sustainable development in developing countries in order to reduce poverty and contribute to a more secure, equitable, and prosperous world." In funding education projects, CIDA has chosen to define education as "the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and training through formal, non-formal, and informal systems and activities" (Isaac, p. 2).

CIDA has its official origins as Canada's External Aid Office, created in 1960 to reduce poverty and promote growth. The office's primary functions were to administer assistance programs funded by the Department of External Affairs, coordinate operations with other agencies, consult with international agencies and Canadian NGOs, and coordinate Canadian efforts to obtain aid for countries affected by disasters. Edward T. Jackson et al., in a 1996 report, note that most bilateral organizations, such as CIDA, spent the 1950s and 1960s focusing on initiatives to increase national production through industrial growth and paid little attention to income distribution within countries. However, as the spirit of such organizations started to change in the late 1960s, Canada complied with international guidelines and replaced "Office" with "Agency" and "Aid" with "International Development," becoming the Canadian International Development Agency in 1968. Education became more of a focus in the 1970s, as growth was promoted through equity by targeting interventions at the poor and meeting "basic human needs." The 1980s were characterized by structural adjustment policies, forcing developing nations to reduce deficits, privatize and deregulate industry, and promote exports. With the 1990s came an emphasis on "accountability and value-for-money spending." In 1990 Canada co-chaired the United Nations World Summit for Children, and it set a ten-year agenda for improving the well-being of children. Goals included attaining a basic education for all children and achieving at least an 80 percent completion rate of primary education for all boys and girls. However, rising public debt and nationwide unemployment forced Canada to cut social programs in the 1990s and also led the country to emphasize development programs that best served Canadian trade and competitiveness objectives. During this time CIDA faced some criticism for having "no comprehensive, official policy on basic human needs," having out-of-date "sub-priority" policies on areas such as education, having an "underdeveloped" management information system, a tendency to "underestimate, undervalue, or ignore altogether the record of engagement in basic human-need by the nongovernmental sector," and a need to boost accountability assessments (Jackson et al., section 5.25).

In 2001 CIDA released Social Development Priorities: A Framework for Action, in which budgetary allocations for social development programs, including education, increased from 19 percent to 38 percent. The plan called for quadrupling funding for basic education to $164 million annually. The additional financial commitment provides support for activities that promote the development and reform of the basic education sector in selected countries, strengthen the integration of locally driven education efforts, and improve the quality of basic education. The two stated goals were to increase gender equality and to achieve universal primary education by 2015. The plan called for improving programming, investing in girls' education, strengthening action against HIV/AIDS, integrating efforts of local communities and NGOs, and strengthening global political commitment.

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency handles Sweden's bilateral international development cooperation and much of its relationship with central and eastern Europe. SIDA attempts to raise the standard of living among poorer populations throughout the world while also addressing geographical concerns, such as security and the environment, through cooperation with countries in central and eastern Europe. Although SIDA contributes financial resources and skill development, it holds partner countries responsible for their own general development and improvement.

SIDA supports development through nine operational areas, including social development that encompasses education. According to the 1997 annual report, SIDA gives priority to programs that have a direct effect on classrooms, particularly textbooks and teacher training. While SIDA's main task is to promote the development of international partners, it also promotes Swedish interests in a variety of ways. First, solving global problems holds direct appeal for both Sweden and its partners. In education, this has included funding primary education in rural areas and building education centers in villages. Second, development cooperation (such as research, business, and volunteerism) helps strengthen relations of value to Swedish society. SIDA has supported the privatization of textbook production in Tanzania and worked with many Swedish university departments to enable Swedish students to perform minor field studies during their senior years. Finally, by contracting with domestic companies and using Swedish goods, SIDA contributes to both the short and long-term growth of the country. About 300 Swedish NGOs receive support, and 60 percent of SIDA's budget goes ultimately to Swedish companies and foundations in the form of consultancy assignments, higher levels of employment, construction contracts, and sales orders. One-third of SIDA's cooperation is channeled through various multilateral organizations (such as the United Nations agencies and the World Bank).

For many years Swedish aid focused on nations that had advanced the most toward a planned economy. In the first part of the 1990s, total Swedish aid declined, thus affecting development program aid. In 1999 Howard White's Dollars, Dialogue, and Development: An Evaluation of Swedish Programme Aid noted SIDA had an excessive bureaucratic burden, which acted as a constraint to SIDA's operations. Also, SIDA supported anti-inflationary policies, which some felt might be "detrimental for long-run growth by undermining investment in human capital" programs, such as education and training. Questions also arose about how well Swedish program aid (which comprised about 12% of total aid in the 1990s) supported policy change in recipient countries.

At the turn of the century, SIDA began to reduce the number of projects by 25 percent in order to maintain quality and efficiency. SIDA also determined that certain countries had developed sufficiently to warrant replacing development grant aid with other types of cooperation. Indeed, the 1997 annual report mentioned phasing out "one-sided giving" in favor of development that "creates mutual benefits and from which all parties gain." According to SIDA, at the center of all development cooperation is developing knowledge and skills, but major efforts in education will not succeed unless other important functions in society, such as public administration, trade, and industry work properly.

The Department for International Development (DFID)

The Department for International Development is the British government entity responsible for promoting development and reducing poverty. DFID has six divisions (Africa, Asia, eastern Europe, western hemisphere, International, and Resources) and seven advisory groups or departments, of which education is one. The majority of DFID's assistance goes to the poorest countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The current department was created in 1997, with policy outlined in the White Paper on International Development. DFID replaced Britain's Ministry of Overseas Development, which was created in 1964. The transformation was in response to increasing globalization of the world economy and a "review of aspirations." According to the White Paper, the 1970s and 1980s had produced inadequate economic policies that benefited only a small portion of the population, and those years produced external factors, such as high oil prices, which particularly affected developing countries.

Thus the new DFID established the goals of contributing to the elimination of poverty in poorer countries through bilateral and multilateral development programs, as well as intergovernmental cooperation. One of the three initial objectives was to improve education, health, and opportunities for poor people. In particular this meant promoting effective universal primary education, literacy, access to information, and life skills. It created targets based on the United Nations conventions and resolutions, which aimed for universal primary education in all countries by 2015 and the elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005. DFID's stated priority was "to achieve the full participation of all children and adults in quality education at all levels."

DFID focuses its education support on access, quality, retention, and equity. Initial strategies included strengthening and extending partnerships by involving local communities in managing schools, reconstructing school systems in poor countries, and promoting research to improve understanding of how education can contribute to the elimination of poverty. Early spending reviews suggested DFID needed to become more selective and focused on poverty reduction in its assistance.

French Agency for Development (AFD)

The French Agency for Development is a public, industrial, and commercial institution and a component of France's official development assistance. The AFD financially supports public and private job creating projects in developing countries. Some projects are financed completely by the AFD, while others are cofinanced with partner-funding agencies. In addition, the AFD deploys and administers structural adjustment aid allocated by the French government.

The AFD functions as a group of domestic and foreign entities, including two domestic subsidiaries and fourteen banking, financial, and real estate subsidiaries operating in the overseas departments and territories. Although the AFD itself manages state treasury loans, grants, and other government funding, it has two domestic subsidiaries: the Society of Promotion and Participation for Economic Cooperation (Proparco) and the Center for Finance, Business, and Banking Studies (CEFEB).

Proparco was established in 1977 as a limited company owned by the AFD, and originally it was concerned mainly with risk capital. The AFD converted Proparco to a financial company in 1990, and it currently works entirely with private-sector funding.

CEFEB focuses purely on education and training. Founded in 1963, it is based in Marseilles, France. CEFEB provides continuing education and training for personnel from France and developing countries with current or future careers in senior posts in economic or financial public services, financial development institutions, and public or private enterprises. CEFEB's principal activities are: (1) an annual diploma course for approximately seventy trainees; (2) specialized short-duration seminars in France; and (3) training missions abroad. In addition, in cooperation with the University of Aix-Marseilles or Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC), CEFEB runs two master's level courses for senior executives–one for human resources managers and the other for managers of operational or functional units. Finally, CEFEB is also involved in running in service training for AFD staff and courses for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The AFD operates in more than eighty countries and has a network of forty-three local offices and agencies around the world. In 1941 General Charles de Gaulle created the Caisse Centrale de la France Libre in London. In 1992 the Caisse Française de Développement was established by decree to succeed the Caisse Centrale de la France Libre, and six years later the name was changed to the Agence Française de Développement, or the French Development Agency. Under a French law established in the 1980s, the AFD is classed as a "specialized financial institution," which is a credit institution with a permanent public-service mission. The AFD's commitments, the terms of those commitments, and the company accounts are submitted for approval to its supervisory board. As a public institution the AFD is subject to control by the French Court of Auditors and, as a specialized financial institution, by the French Banking Commission.

The AFD plays a role in both bilateral and multilateral programs. Bilateral aid is directed mainly toward countries with strong historical and political ties. Countries in Africa and French-speaking countries worldwide have traditionally been given special attention by the AFD and its predecessors. About 75 percent of AFD aid is handled on a bilateral basis. The other 25 percent is handled at a multilateral level, within international and European organizations. As a whole, the AFD has designed its development cooperation to be compatible with other members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and to have a European context through investments in central and eastern Europe.

The AFD's program activity can be divided into fourteen sectors, of which the educational infrastructure is one. After becoming the AFD in 1998, almost 60 percent of project aid went to sub-Saharan Africa. However, the government directed the agency to expand, and more aid started to move into the Mediterranean region and Lebanon. Still, only about 1 percent of all project aid went to education specific projects. Conversely, about 50 percent of all project aid at the beginning of the new millennium went to support rural development and urban infrastructure.

Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

The Japan International Cooperation Agency was created in 1974 to handle Japan's bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA). As Japan's governmental aid agency, JICA has a stated goal of "helping people to help themselves." Japan handles official development assistance through a program devised in 1954 as a part of the Colombo Plan to assist Asian countries. That program has three components: (1) bilateral grants; (2) bilateral loans; and (3) multilateral assistance. JICA is responsible for most of the first component, bilateral grants, which are composed of grant aid and "technical cooperation." The agency also conducts surveys and helps execute a capital-grant assistance program on the part of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition, JICA has helped create a long-term training program to allow foreign students to obtain academic degrees in Japan as well as a grant-aid program to support foreign students.

One of JICA's education contributions is through this capital-grant assistance program. These projects may hold public value but are not highly profitable, as grant aid involves financial assistance without obligation of repayment and is focused upon basic human needs. There are three types of grant aid: general, aid for fisheries, and aid for increased food production. Education projects are funded through general grant aid, and projects include construction of education-related facilities such as school buildings, expansion of broadcast education services, and training and retraining of educators. Aid is also provided for specific local needs.

In addition, JICA provides for training through technical cooperation activities. In essence, technical cooperation refers to the fostering of human and socioeconomic development through the exchange of technology and knowledge. JICA engages in technical cooperation with developing countries in six basic ways: (1) by providing training in Japan; (2) dispatching Japanese experts to provide training abroad; (3) supplying equipment; (4) providing technical assistance in the development of projects;(5) conducting economic development studies; and (6) dispatching Japanese volunteers to work in developing countries. Training, expert dispatch projects, and volunteer dispatch each have educational elements. Training courses include both group and individual courses, and many group courses have been implemented in the field of education (such as "The Practice of Science Education"). The volunteer dispatch program sends Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV) to primary and secondary educational institutions. The expert dispatch sends experts to education-related agencies and vocational-training programs in Japan and overseas. Finally, project cooperation is directed at universities through such programs as agriculture, engineering, and medicine.

The Japanese government's interest in assisting developing countries grew after receiving aid from the World Bank in the 1950s for its own reconstruction. In 1954 Japan established Official Development Assistance (ODA), and according to JICA, Japan's development assistance has expanded annually since that time. Initially, Japan focused on funding Asian countries, but toward the end of the twentieth century began expanding aid to eastern and central Europe. By 1992 it was the major donor in twenty-five countries. With the creation of JICA in 1974, Japan's ODA started taking a more country and issue-specific approach. As the cold war came to a close, certain development issues, such as education, the environment, and population began to receive more global attention, and this was reflected in JICA projects. Beginning with the 1990 World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand, Japan adopted the international goals of extending primary education and eliminating gender inequality in education. Consequently, a much larger portion of JICA's contributions have gone to primary schools whereas until 1990 higher education had received greater emphasis.

Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD)

The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation aims to assist developing countries in improving political, economic, and social conditions. Headquartered in Oslo, Norway, NORAD is a Norwegian directorate under Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. NORAD is responsible for bilateral and long-term aid, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs handles the administration of multilateral projects. The education sector became a higher priority in the late 1980s and 1990s, with funding nearly tripling during that time. Asia receives the most Norwegian educational support.

NORAD focuses on six major areas of development: social development; economic development; peace, democracy, and human rights; environment and natural resource management; humanitarian assistance in the event of conflict or natural disasters; and gender equality. NORAD gives priority to education funding, and most of these six major areas have educational objectives. For example, by providing assistance for multilingual education and cultural diversity, NORAD attempts to support human rights and democracy.

In addition, NORAD invests in knowledge and human resource development in order to assist in the health and education sectors. A variety of programs support the development of knowledge management, research-based planning, support for international involvement in centers of knowledge, institutional development at universities and colleges in partner countries, the development of financial plans for research and higher education, and cooperation in research and education.

Although Norway has been involved in international development activities since the late 1940s, NORAD was created in 1968. Norway's first bilateral education project began in 1952, as a component of the India Fund's "Kerala Project." The project was designed to promote economic and social development of the people of India and had a number of programs, including "fishery colleges." In the 1960s programs extended to other countries in Asia and Africa, and in 1968 NORAD took over aid activities and obtained a broader range of objectives. In essence, NORAD became the sole agency responsible for coordinating and preparing Norway's official development aid. Before 1990 most of NORAD's education aid went to tertiary education. In 1991 a Norwegian white paper endorsed the goals of "education for all," established at the 1990 Jomtien World Declaration of Education for All conference. Since that time, NORAD's orientation to development has evolved from a project approach to more sectorwide programs, such as the Basic Primary Education Project in Nepal, and the Basic Education Sub-Sector Investment Program in Zambia.

Norway conducts annual evaluations, available to the public, of its foreign aid program. Suggestions for NORAD's education programs have included improving donor coordination and ensuring that recipient countries play a stronger role in coordinating aid, improving information management, conducting specific evaluations of education programs, and funding educational research in beneficiary countries.

Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education (Nuffic)

The Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education was created in the 1950s to promote an accurate image of Dutch higher education around the world. Its mission states four major areas of interest: development cooperation, internationalization of higher education, credential evaluation, and positioning Dutch higher education worldwide. Within these four areas, human resource and institutional development receives the most funding, followed by international academic relations, communication, and finally, international credential evaluation.

Higher education in the Netherlands has three branches: (1) the universities of professional education; (2) the remaining universities; and (3) international education institutes. Nuffic's board consists of members appointed by organizations representing each of these branches. Nuffic also has three secretariats: the National Commission for UNESCO, the Netherlands Development Assistance Research Council, and the Steering Committee of the Netherlands Israel Development Research Program. In addition to these three autonomous secretariats, Nuffic began conducting language courses for both foreigners and Dutch people in 1966. Participants in this program include students, foreign employees and their partners, embassy staff, au pairs, and classroom groups.

One of Nuffic's initial programs in the 1950s was international credential evaluation. Essentially, Nuffic offers advice regarding the relative value of foreign higher education diplomas in the Netherlands and vice versa. Nuffic publishes a manual, Evaluation of Foreign Credentials in the Netherlands, to help clients in this regard. An Internet resource describing procedures of higher education qualifications earned within the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area Countries (EEA) is also maintained. As internationalization grew throughout the world in the mid-1980s, Nuffic assumed a role of encouraging cooperation between Dutch institutions and other industrialized countries. The goal was to improve Dutch higher education and broaden its dimensions. The primary method of promoting internationalization was the exchange of Dutch students and staff, and these efforts were supported by grants and scholarships.

Nuffic's primary source of difficulty has been the confrontation between different academic and cultural traditions, which has resulted in delays and irritation among participants. Nuffic has published various books in an effort to help program participants deal with issues arising from these differences.

Development cooperation represents one of Nuffic's main activities. At the end of the 1990s Nuffic reduced its concentration to a smaller number of countries to install a sectorwide approach, which emphasizes human resource development. This change represents a philosophical shift within the agency in which education is regarded as integral to all areas of development, and thus development cooperation receives the greatest amount of Nuffic's expenditures. Nuffic administers and finances education programs, initiates communication, and helps develop policy in beneficiary countries. Programs are categorized as human resource development, such as fellowships and scholarships, or institutional development, such as the Joint Financing Program for Cooperation in Higher Education (MHO) and Cooperation between the Netherlands and South Africa (CENESA).

In 1999 Nuffic adopted a more succinctly worded mission regarding knowledge export, by stating the goal "to position Dutch higher education on emerging markets." That same year, Nuffic set up the Project Office for Positioning Higher Education, to coordinate and support efforts of Dutch higher education institutions with the goal of recruiting institutional partners and foreign students. Three nations were targeted: Taiwan, China, and Indonesia. In 1998 Nuffic established the Network for the Export of Higher Education, in which nearly forty higher education institutions join to exchange information and coordinate activities.

The German Organization for Technical Cooperation (Deutsche Gesselschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit) (GTZ)

The German Organization for Technical Cooperation is owned by the Federal Republic of Germany, and it operates as a service enterprise for international development cooperation. Established in 1975 as a private-sector enterprise with a development policy mandate, the GTZ supports international development, reform, and technical cooperation on behalf of the Federal German Ministry for Economic Cooperation (BMZ) and other German ministries, partner-country governments, and international organizations. Education represents one of the GTZ's sector-related themes, and it has four major components: educational aids, basic education, vocational training, and universities/scientific and technical institutions.

The first educational area, education aids, operates by the name of the Crystal project. Crystal provides teachers' aids such as textbooks and materials, specialist literature, and consulting. Consulting services are provided for vocational training, work-oriented training, and development cooperation (such as the application of new media and education aids). Services and materials are free to developing countries, and many of them are described in a Crystal catalog.

In the second area of basic education, the GTZ serves in an advisory role. The GTZ advises developing government partners on ways to improve their basic education systems. The suggestions focus upon quality, efficiency, and relevance through the design of programming methods and system structures. The GTZ's educational philosophy supports a decentralized approach utilizing parents and communities. Three major basic education activities include: (1) developing and introducing appropriate curricular elements and relevant learning and teaching materials; (2) institution building; and (3) systems consulting.

Vocational training encompasses the GTZ's third education area. These services are aimed at policymakers, industry, research and planning institutions, state and private training institutions, and in company training facilities. The GTZ serves a consulting and planning role for the general vocational field as well as individual institutes of further and advanced training and vocational agencies. Specific services include concept design, planning, and evaluation, along with the establishment and commissioning of agencies and staff.

Finally, the GTZ provides consulting for universities and scientific and technical institutions. The goals of this higher education theme are to improve the performance capacity of education and research systems, to boost training performance and research capacity, and to encourage an exchange of ideas and experience at the academic level through international linkages. The GTZ provides services such as developing education and research systems, developing institutions, consulting on program conduct and efficiency, and the promotion of cooperation in training and research.

When the GTZ was developed, most services were conducted out of the head office. Though the head office is still the major interface between the government and project implementation abroad, in an effort to cut costs, the organization began to emphasize decentralization and regionalization in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This shifted responsibility to the field offices in more than sixty partner countries. The GTZ has also focused most heavily on advisory services. The late 1980s figured prominently in the GTZ's development because of German reunification. This required Eastern bloc nations, including the former East Germany, to make the transition to a market economy. Since the changes in Germany both drove and were affected by globalization, the GTZ decided to expand its cooperation with other organizations. In addition, the GTZ took on a larger role in the promotion of democracy worldwide.

Summary

Overall, bilateral agencies have been expanding their education and training goals since the early 1990s. The opening of eastern Europe, the fall of state socialism, and the 1990 Jomtien World Conference on Education for All were among the main factors shaping education policy regarding the geography and the goals of bilateral aid. Still, in the late 1990s, actual overall aid budgets had begun to decline, especially across the member countries of the OECD. Indeed, though policies have had lofty objectives, the reality often has not been as positive. According to Therien and Lloyd, bilateral aid agencies have faced issues such as dwindling resources, the loss of donors and a rationale for aid because of the end of the cold war and the dismantling of the Soviet Union, greater support of domestic aid instead of foreign development assistance, and an overall decrease in public support. As interests of donors have taken precedence over the interests of recipients, development aid has suffered. Other issues facing bilateral agencies include problems working through recipient governments, the inconsistency between economic and social development objectives (which span countries), and inconsistent foreign policy goals (with regard to specific countries). Some examples of these issues include French aid to francophone Africa, U.S. aid to Egypt and Israel, and Nordic aid to its program countries. Furthermore, globalization and development assistance received much scrutiny at the beginning of the new millennium, as groups questioned whether or not programs were actually reducing poverty.

See also: International Development Agencies and Education, subentry on United Nations and International Agencies; Nongovernmental Organizations and Foundations.

bibliography

Canadian International Development Agency. 1976. Annual Report: 1975–1976. Hull, Quebec: Canadian International Development Agency.

Canadian International Development Agency. 2001. Social Development Priorities: A Framework for Action. Hull, Quebec: Canadian International Development Agency.

Deutsche Gesselschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit. 1999. Annual Report, 1998. Eschborn, Germany: Deutsche Gesselschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit.

Deutsche Gesselschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit. 2000. Annual Report, 1999. Eschborn, Germany: Deutsche Gesselschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit.

Heyneman, Stephen P. 1997. "Economic Growth and the International Trade in Education Reform." Prospects 37:501–530.

Isaac, Annette. 1999. Education and Peacebuilding–A Preliminary Operational Framework. Hull, Quebec: Canadian International Development Agency Peacebuilding Unit.

Jackson, Edward t.; Beaulieu, Denise; Gallant, Marielle; and Hodgson, Dwayne. 1996. Learning for Results: Issues, Trends, and Lessons Learned in Basic Human Needs–Literature Review. Ottawa, Ontario: E.T. Jackson and Associates.

Lexow, Janne. 2000. Norwegian Support to the Education Sector: Overview of Policies and Trends, 1988–1998. Taastrup, Denmark: Nordic Consulting Group.

Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education. 1999. Building Bridges: Annual Report, 1999. The Hague, The Netherlands: Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education.

Swedish International Development Agency. 1998. Annual Report: 1997. Stockholm: Swedish International Development Agency.

Therien, Jean Phillipe, and Lloyd, Carolyn. 2000. "Development Assistance on the Brink." Third World Quarterly 21 (1):21–38.

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internet resources

Agency for French Development. 2002. <www.afd.fr>.

Canadian International Development Agency. 2002.<www.acdi-cida.gc.ca>.

Department for International Development. 2002. <www.dfid.gov.uk>.

Deutsche Gesselschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit. 2002. <www.gtz.de>.

Japan International Cooperation Agency. 2002. <www.jica.go.jp>.

Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education. 2002. <www.nuffic.nl>.

Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation. 2002. <www.norad.no>.

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. 2002. <www.sida.se>.

U.S. Agency for International Development.2002. <www.usaid.gov>.

Andrew J. Finch

REGIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Official regional development agencies are those whose mandate confines them to serve regional objectives. Some are part of regional governments, such as the European Union (EU), while others are managed by groups of individual national governments with common interests, like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This entry will review the history, legacy, importance, and role of some of the more important regional institutions with regard to education.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Purpose. Originally founded as the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), OECD was formed to administer American and Canadian aid for the reconstruction of Europe under the Marshall Plan after World War II. In 1961 the organization was renamed the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to promote economic growth and global trade. Since then, its mandate has been to build strong economies in member countries, improve efficiency, hone market systems, expand free trade, and contribute to development in industrialized and developing countries. It also groups the thirty member countries in an organization that provides a setting in which governments develop economic and social policy. Increasingly nongovernmental organizations and civil society are included in policy and thematic discussions. OECD is well known for its publications and statistics, which cover economic and social issues including education, the environment, social policy, and science and technology.

Structure. OECD's internal governance consists of each member country having a permanent representative, usually of ambassadorial rank, who sits on the council, the governance body. The council, meeting in sessions of ministers or permanent representatives, makes all major decisions on budgetary issues and the work programs of each committee.

Projects and activities. OECD does not generate operational development projects, but rather focuses on information-generating projects, such as collecting statistical indicators across OECD countries and writing publications. For example, OECD's Directorate of Education, Employment, Labor, and Social Affairs (DEELSA) undertakes work in the following five areas: (1) education and skills; (2) employment;(3) health; (4) international migration; and (5) social issues.

DEELSA undertakes research and policy work in education as well as other areas. The emphasis within education is on lifelong learning, from early childhood to adulthood, which is considered important for social integration and a tool in the battle against social exclusion, from both society and the labor market. However, the work of DEELSA spans the range from early childhood development to higher education, including adult learning and literacy, education indicators, education policies, finance of lifelong learning, higher education management, human and social capital, information and communication technology (ICT) and the quality of learning, inclusion and equity, knowledge and learning, a program for international student assessment, schooling for tomorrow, and the transition from initial education to working life. The directorate produces host meetings and conferences to discuss these issues and provides online documents, newsletters, and publications pertaining to each area. In addition, the directorate works in close cooperation with the thirty member countries and draws on the expertise of the secretariat and external consultants, who provide advice and guidance through their national delegations and ministerial meetings. The resulting work is intended to meet the needs of member countries and their citizens.

Within DEESLA is the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), which carries out studies and promotes an international dialogue about education across OECD countries. It is a source of information and publications on the topic of education. It strives to establish links between research, policy innovation, and practice, to enhance knowledge about educational trends internationally, and to actively engage educational researchers, practitioners, and government officials in cross-national discussions.

Statistical improvements. One of the first efforts to improve education statistics was the creation, in 1990, of the Indicators of National Education Systems (INES) with support in part from the U.S. Department of Education. OECD embraces the importance of statistics as a means of achieving informed policymaking. The INES program responds to the need to standardize the collection of statistics on a given aspect of education. For example, in the area of students with disabilities or learning or behavior problems, each member country uses a different definition for a particular term. The INES program works to establish uniformity in the definition and collection of indicators.

More recently, the World Education Indicator (WEI) project, a joint endeavor of OECD and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), has become an important initiative to expand the indicators system beyond OECD countries. Begun in 1997 as a pilot project for a small group of countries invited by OECD and UNESCO, the primary aim of the project is to develop a small but critical mass of policy-oriented education indicators, which measure the current state of education in an internationally valid, timely, and efficient manner. The project received funding from the World Bank for organization and administration, but participating countries provided their own resources for assembling and reporting data.

During the first year, the eleven countries that initially agreed to participate identified common education issues of concern, agreed upon an indicator set and the definitions and classifications to be used in the data collection, and assembled and provided the data. OECD processed the data and results, which were subsequently presented in the annual publication Education at a Glance. During the second year of the project, OECD and UNESCO agreed to add a number of countries that had expressed an interest in joining the pilot group, bringing the number of participating countries to sixteen. Indicators prepared from the data submissions over the two-year period served as the basis for a separate WEI report released in 2000. In 2001 the project produced Teachers for Tomorrow's Schools: Analysis of the World Education Indicators, a second volume that analyzes education indicators developed through the WEI project.

In addition to the basic data collection to derive the indicators, a number of special-interest groups assembled to research areas requiring data development and make recommendations based on their research of additions to the indicator set. World Bank funding permits pilot projects in six selected countries to develop national education indicators systems that both respond to national policy information needs and are compatible with education indicators used at the international level. The result of these pilot projects is a number of national education indicator publications that are disseminated to policymakers within national ministries and development agencies.

European Union (EU)

Purpose. The European Union, formed by the Maastricht Treaty of 1993, expanded European integration through the establishment of a common foreign and security policy and standards of justice, and improved police protection. A twenty-member European Commission represents the policymaking arm and executive body for the fifteen countries that comprise the EU. The Council of the European Union (not to be confused with the Council of Europe, which is a separate regional institution) is comprised of one representative of ministerial level from each member country, and it represents the legislative body of the EU. Along with the European Parliament, the council makes legislative and budgetary decisions for the EU.

In the formation of the EU, education was suggested to remain a national enterprise. Article 149 of The Treaty Establishing the European Community notes, "The Community shall contribute to the development of quality education by encouraging cooperation between Member States and, if necessary, by supporting and supplementing their action, while fully respecting the responsibility of the Member States for the content of teaching and the organization of education systems and their cultural and linguistic diversity." However, although education itself is thus not an official function of the EU mandate, EU literature still claims education and vocational training were "two cornerstones of the Commission's commitment to securing investment in people" ("Education–Training–Youth"). In fact, education programs were inaugurated to improve the prospects of European integration in culture, science, technology, and labor markets.

The EU's education policy has six basic components: (1) education; (2) vocational training; (3) recognition of diplomas and comparability of vocational qualifications; (4) training and mobility;(5) youth; and (6) international cooperation. The education component contains programs dealing with quality, access, and the teaching of languages. There have been four main programs–Tempus, Socrates, Erasmus, and Lingua–and European integration was the rationale for each.

Erasmus program. Erasmus (1987), Lingua (1989), and Tempus (1990) were each established before the official creation of the EU in 1993, as projects of the European Community, a precursor to the EU. The Erasmus program was adopted in June 1987 and amended in December 1989, and its focus was the mobility of university students within the European Community. The steps included establishing a European university network among the member states, the creation of grants to assist with travel and the cost-of-living differential, recognition and mobility of diplomas and periods of study, and the financing of promotional activities to create awareness of work throughout the European Community. In 1994, its final year as an independent program, Erasmus received European Currency Unit (ECU) 96.7 million.

Lingua program. Lingua went into effect in January 1990 and lasted independently for five years. It was an attempt to bolster foreign-language competence within the EU. Specifically, it focused upon Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Luxembourgish, Portuguese, and Spanish. The program operated at various levels: citizens, teachers, university students, and organizations. The focus was on promotion, increasing learning opportunities, and innovative training. Lingua's budget was set at about 200 million euros. In its five years, Lingua provided services for 120,000 youth through educational projects, 30,000 students through interuniversity cooperation, and 30,000 teachers through training grants. In addition, projects promoting languages in economics and business were established. In 1995 Lingua activities were integrated into other EU programs.

Tempus program. Tempus was first established in May 1990, with a second phase adopted in April 1993, and a third phase adopted in April 1999. The third phase was scheduled to last from 2000 through 2006. Tempus was designed to help develop higher education systems for the "eligible countries" operating as partners with EU member states, and funding was established at ECU 95 to 100 million per year. Eligible countries include a number of republics in central and eastern Europe and central Asia. Its stated objectives were to develop new teaching programs, purchase equipment, encourage mobility of university professors, create periods of study in member states, and promote the learning of European Community languages. The overall goal of each of these objectives was to assist in the transfer to a market economy. The second and third phases added more countries to the list of eligible nations and further refined its features. The third phase aimed to adapt higher education to the socioeconomic and cultural needs of the new democracies. By phase three, the focus had become the reform of higher education structures, linking training to industry, and strengthening citizenship and democracy.

Socrates program. While Tempus was continually updated as its own program, both Lingua and Erasmus were melded into the Socrates program, the only one of the four to be established first as an EU program. Socrates was inaugurated in March 1995 and moved into a second six-year phase in January 2000. Socrates had a much more general aim to actually create an open European educational area through access, mobility, and language knowledge. It incorporated higher education (Erasmus), school education (Comenius), and adult education initiatives (Grundtvig), as well as language learning (Lingua), distance learning and technology education (Minerva), and information exchanges (Arion and Eurydice). Socrates also extended beyond the member states into some central and eastern European countries and former Soviet republics. Phase two had a budget of 1.85 million euros.

Program evaluation. Criticism and difficulties of the four programs included the divergence among the legacies of the various nations, especially the newly independent states; coordination and communication between nations; and monitoring and evaluation of projects. However, there have also been some indirect side effects, including the improvement of quality, coverage, and content of local and national systems.

The remaining components. Vocational training involves access to training, analyzing qualification requirements, quality of training, and promotion of apprenticeship. The EU has run a variety of programs and organizations to handle vocational training. These have included Comett and Eurotecnet to promote technology and human resource training, IRIS (Inter-Regional Information Society) to promote equality of opportunity, Petra to boost the status of vocational education and encourage transnational cooperation, Force to encourage investment in vocational education, and Leonard da Vinci to promote lifelong learning and EU cooperation.

Recognition of diplomas and qualifications and training and mobility both attempt to facilitate unity with the EU. This has involved creating mechanisms for the recognition of diplomas and the establishment of comparable training. It has also meant the removal of barriers to mobility, such as recognition of training abroad and the continuation of health insurance.

Youth programs have included volunteer service, social inclusion, and youth exchange programs, such as "Youth for Europe." Finally, international cooperation programs have involved the United States and Canada.

The EU has its origins in the European Federalists Union, designed in 1946. The following year, the Marshall Plan was signed, and a variety of unionist movements began, culminating in the International Coordination of Movements for the Unification of Europe Committee in December 1947. Some of those involved in the movement wanted a federation, and others wanted simply cooperation. In 1950 French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed a union of countries to pool coal and steel resources. Six nations (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) ultimately subscribed to the Schuman Plan, forming the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951. These six nations ratified the Treaty of Rome in 1953, thus officially starting the path toward a European union forty years later. This community developed from a tax, customs, and quantity regulator into a full-fledged political institution, dealing with trade, human rights, labor, economics, agriculture, and energy. In 1967 the ECSC merged with the European Economic Community and Euratom to form the European Communities (EC). In November 1976 a council was held in The Hague, and a statement was published regarding the possible construction of a "European Union." In 1983 the Ministers of Education held their first joint meeting with the Ministers of Employment and Social Affairs. A ruling on non-discriminatory enrollment fees was handed down in 1985. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent opening of eastern Europe, a council held in Maastricht, the Netherlands, drafted a Treaty on the European Union in 1991, which was ratified in 1993 with twelve member nations. Just before ratification, the commission published a green paper on creating a "European dimension of education." In 1995 Austria, Sweden, and Finland joined the EU, bringing the number to fifteen, with a number of eastern European newly independent states awaiting ratification. A council in Brussels in 2001 outlined a ten-year strategic education and training plan with three main objectives: (1) increase quality and effectiveness of education in the EU; (2) facilitate access; and (3) open up education and training systems "to a wider world" through research, mobility, and exchanges.

The Council of Europe (COE)

The Council of Europe is distinct from–and larger than–the European Union. As of 2001 the COE comprised forty-three member states, including all fifteen of the European Union states. Established in 1949 and headquartered in Strasbourg, France, the COE is a regional organization that essentially makes recommendations (through conventions, studies, and activities) to member states. The COE holds no legislative authority over its members, and this allows it to consider a large breadth of issues. The COE has developed programs involving human rights, economics, health, culture, sport, the environment, education, and many others, not including defense. It also tries to ensure that citizens of one nation, who are residents of another, will receive the same social benefits as the nationals. The requirements for membership in the COE are less stringent than the EU, as nations basically must accept "the principle of the rule of law" and guarantee "human rights and fundamental freedoms to everyone under its jurisdiction" (Council of Europe website 2001).

The COE was born from the 1948 Congress of Europe. While some nations favored a European union or federation, others felt more comfortable with basic intergovernmental cooperation. These nations (along with five of the six eventual charter members of the ECSC) formed the COE in 1949. One of the earliest COE conventions included education. In 1950 the ten original member states signed the European Cultural Convention, which established a framework for education, as well as youth, culture, and sport.

With so many nations involved in discussions, the breadth of issues considered by the COE has also stretched the specific area of education. The COE has considered educational projects in primary, secondary, higher, and adult education; research and promoting links and exchanges; recognition of educational qualifications throughout Europe; publishing handbooks for policymakers and educators; and cooperating with European institutions and nongovernmental organizations. In addition, with the opening of central and eastern Europe, educational programs to assist the new democracies took hold in the 1990s. The COE has been active in promoting democratic citizenship and, toward the end of the 1990s, social cohesion.

Regarding higher education, the COE established the Higher Education and Research Committee for the exchanges of views and experience among member-state universities. Other higher education activities have included mobility, recognition of qualifications, lifelong learning, citizenship, cultural heritage, access, research, and social sciences. In 1971 the COE established the European Documentation and Information System for Education (EUDISED), which pools education research from throughout Europe and is available via the Internet. EUDISED is a joint project with the EU's European Commission. In addition, the Legislative Reform Program (LRP) helps new member states reform their higher education laws.

The variety of cultures and languages represented by the COE presents challenges for any cooperative effort, thus language learning and social science have been the focus of many programs, such as the Council for Cultural Cooperation's Modern Language Project and the European Center for Modern Languages. The COE's cultural work has also involved democracy, human rights, minorities, history teaching, and "Europe at School," an annual Europewide competition for school children.

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is the largest regional security organization in the world with fifty-five participating states from Europe, Central Asia, and North America. It is active in early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management, and postconflict rehabilitation.

The OSCE approach to security is comprehensive and cooperative. It deals with a wide range of security-related issues, including arms control, preventive diplomacy, confidence and security-building measures, human rights, democratization, election monitoring, and economic and environmental security. It is cooperative in the sense that all OSCE participating states have equal status, and decisions are based on consensus.

The OSCE headquarters are located in Vienna, Austria. The organization also has offices and institutions located in Geneva, Switzerland; The Hague, Netherlands; Prague, Czech Republic; and Warsaw, Poland. The organization employs about 4,000 staff in more than twenty missions and field activities located in southeastern Europe, the Caucasus, eastern Europe, and Central Asia. They work "on the ground" to facilitate political processes, prevent or settle conflicts, and promote civil society and the rule of law.

The organization's attention to education is twofold; it comprises (1) internal and external training efforts, and (2) an emphasis on voter and civic education.

Given the considerable increase in the number and size of OSCE field activities in the 1990s, the OSCE's training efforts must be able to adapt to the changing environment. The OSCE participating states regard training as a tool for enhancing the ability of the organization's institutions and missions to carry out their mandate. This is the underlying principle behind the OSCE Strategy on Capacity Building and Training adopted by the OSCE Permanent Council in March 1999. Participating states have acknowledged the need for training in two main spheres: first, training as a component of human resources management within the organization; second, training as an instrument to achieve the goals of the OSCE in conflict prevention, crisis management, and postconflict rehabilitation.

Within the areas of voter and civic education, training is emphasized. The OSCE deems it necessary for election observers to be able to assess the extent and effectiveness of voter and civic education. Sufficient voter and civic education is necessary to ensure that participants in the electoral process are fully informed of their rights and responsibilities as voters. These efforts can also generate knowledge and interest about the election process and build a climate for open debate. Voter education is focused on the particular election and should inform voters of when, how, and where to vote. It is therefore essential that this information be provided in a timely manner, allowing voters sufficient time to make use of the information. Civic education is a long-term process of educating citizens in the fundamentals of democratic society and civic responsibility. It may focus on the choices available to the voter and the significance of these choices within the respective political system.

Although political parties and civic organizations may contribute to voter and civic education efforts, it is ultimately the responsibility of the government and the election authorities to ensure that voters receive objective and impartial information, which should be provided to all eligible voters, including traditionally disenfranchised segments of the population, such as minorities.

Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO)

The Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization promotes cooperation in education, science, and culture in Southeast Asia. The SEAMEO was established in 1965 in Bangkok, Thailand, and it has a mission to establish networks and partnerships, to provide a forum for policymakers and experts, and to develop regional "Centers of Excellence" for human resource development. Some specific education project areas include education technology, language, higher education, science and mathematics, vocational and technical education, distance learning, history, and education management.

The SEAMEO has ten member countries from Southeast Asia, six associate member countries from Australia, North America, and Europe, and one donor country, Japan. Each member and associate member assigns a representative to the SEAMEO Council. There are eleven centers that focus upon various sectors.

Each of the centers involves education to some degree. The Center for the Impact on Tropical Biology builds capabilities and provides grants and training. It also is developing a postgraduate degree program in information technology in natural resource management. The Center for the Impact on Educational Innovation and Technology provides training in educational leadership, curriculum and policy development, technology, literacy, nonformal education, and community development. The Center for the Impact on Education in Science and Mathematics provides research and teacher training in science and mathematics instruction. The Center for the Impact on Language Education provides teacher training in language instruction through pedagogy, testing, and textbooks. The Center for the Impact on Higher Education Development promotes recognition of qualification in Southeast Asia and conducts networking and policy development in higher education. The Center for the Impact in Indochina runs a regional training center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, which provides English training and planning for vocational and technical school directors. The Center for the Impact on Open Learning/Distance Education provides computer resources and training to promote distance learning. The Center for the Impact on Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture provides graduate study, training, and research, and it adopted an elementary school through the Community Outreach Program. The Center for the Impact on Archaeology and Fine Arts develops theories of standard practices and scholarship on regional culture, arts, archaeology, and heritage. The Center for the Impact of Tropical Medicine and Public Health was established for training and research, and it grew into a forum on policies and sector needs. Finally, the Center for the Impact on Vocational and Technical Education conducts training programs and provides an education database.

SEAMEO emerged from a 1965 meeting between education ministers from Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, and the Republic of South Vietnam (now Vietnam). Advisers from UNESCO and the United States were also involved. Indonesia and the Philippines joined in 1968, followed by Cambodia in 1971, Brunei Darussalam in 1984, and Myanmar in 1998. Its first thirty-five years saw numerous challenges within the region in the form of various social and political transitions, some of them violent, and an extreme economic downturn in the 1990s. Also, SEAMEO has faced cultural diversity that has created both tension and programs.

Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)

The Inter-American Development Bank, the oldest and largest regional multilateral development institution, was established in December 1959 to help accelerate economic and social development in Latin America and the Caribbean. The bank's operations cover the entire spectrum of economic and social development. In the past, IDB lending emphasized the productive sectors of agriculture and industry, the physical infrastructure sectors of energy and transportation, and the social sectors of environmental and public health, education, and urban development. Current lending priorities include poverty reduction and social equity, modernization and integration, and the environment.

IDB provides financing for projects in the education sector for the purpose of promoting greater integration of educational activities within the national development strategy of the member countries. The loans and technical cooperation from the bank for education have the following objectives:

• Training of human resources for development to contribute to the formation of technical and scientific skills that enable people to efficiently carry out the occupational tasks of promotion and management needed for the economic and social development of the country.
• Equality of educational opportunities to facilitate national efforts for introducing conditions of fairness in access to education opportunities for the entire population.
• Efficiency of investments in education to stimulate and support national efforts for rational planning of education systems and the essential reforms in content, teaching methods, organization and administration of programs, and institutions and systems, to achieve more positive results within the financial possibilities of the country.

IDB gives preference for financing development projects in the following educational areas:

1. Higher education programs at the professional, postgraduate, and scientific and technological research level and the training of specialized technicians in short-duration courses. The bank will support the role of higher education in the training of management teams needed in the development process and will stimulate the strengthening, at the national and regional levels, of institutions with high academic standards capable of showing the way in critical development areas.
2. Programs on technical education and professional training to turn out skilled workers and middle-level technicians in occupations needed for productive activities and to assure their participation in the social and cultural benefits of their communities, including reform and adaptation of middle-level education programs, which provide training in technical occupations without sacrificing the opportunity of acquiring basic education.
3. Education programs to provide a minimum of social and work skills to young persons and adults who did not have access to formal education, thus equipping them to find employment in rural development programs or rehabilitation of urban areas.
4. Programs to introduce substantive reforms in curriculum, teaching methods, structure, organization, and functioning of basic, formal, and nonformal education at the primary and secondary level. These programs can include education research, training and retraining of teachers and auxiliary technical staff, nontraditional forms of education, and the design, production, and evaluation of institutional materials, equipment, and communication systems of proven effectiveness. The basic objective of these programs is to improve the quality and efficiency of education activities and to expand the levels of participation without considerable increase in cost.
5. Programs to improve efficiency and fairness in the application of funds intended for financing education and promoting the creation of additional sources of financing by improving student loan systems, social security, business support, scholarships for priority professional fields, and such other systems as appropriate.

Asian Development Bank (ADB)

The Asian Development Bank, a regional multilateral development institution established in 1966, provides loans and investments for developing countries; technical assistance for development projects, programs, and services; facilitation of public and private capital investment for development; and assistance in policy coordination and planning. The ADB has fifty-nine member countries, with Japan and the United States as the largest shareholders (combining for almost one-third of the shares). The ADB has a stated primary goal of reducing poverty in Asia and the Pacific, and its headquarters are in Manila, Philippines.

One of the ADB's objectives is supporting human development, and education is one of the major means to this end. Noting that education is a basic human right recognized in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ADB states, "Education helps lay the foundation for the three pillars of poverty reduction: human development, equitable economic growth, and good governance" (Asian Development Bank 2001). However, it was not until 1988 that the ADB formally stated in a policy paper that basic education was a human right. According to its own historical accounts, the ADB invested $4.6 billion in education between 1970 and 2000, with about two-thirds of that investment occurring in the 1990s. During its initial years, the ADB followed a "manpower planning" and economic growth philosophy and funded facilities and equipment for vocational and technical education. In 1988 the ADB published its first education sector policy paper, which called for investment in primary and secondary education to foster human and social development. In 1990 the ADB adopted the goals set down by the World Conference on Education for All, held in Jomtien, Thailand, which called for universal education and gender equity. With these goals came an emphasis on basic education, teacher training, and curriculum planning. The ADB also moved deeper into policy, research, and capacity-building activities. However, education represented only about 6 percent of the ADB's total investments during the 1990s.

The ADB's 2001 education policy paper called for the ADB to support programs in literacy and nonformal education, early childhood development, basic education, secondary education, higher education, and skills training. It also called for reducing poverty, enhancing the status of women, and facilitating economic growth.

Critique of the ADB has included a narrow focus on "schooling as opposed to education in the broader sense" (Asian Development Bank 2001), uneven distribution of support (three countries accounted for two-thirds of the total education lending between 1970 and 2000), an early focus on traditional project technical assistance, education as a relatively small proportion of the ADB's overall investment portfolio, sector reform not always guided by clear policy goals and strategies, and overall education investment not reaching its impact potential because of weak sector analysis.

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)

The Economic Commission for Africa is a United Nations regional institution designed to foster economic and social development and promote regional integration and cooperation in Africa. Established in 1958, the ECA has its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and it reports directly to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The fifty-three African countries comprise the ECA's member states, and it serves four main modal functions: (1) advocacy and policy analysis; (2) convening stake-holders and building consensus; (3) technical cooperation and capacity building; and (4) enhancing the United Nation's role in Africa. In approaching educational and other policy issues, the ECA essentially reports on social situations and influences policy.

Because of Africa's size, political situations, and economic extremes, education in the continent provides a variety of challenges. A 1995 conference of ministers' report (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa 2001) outlined many of the educational issues the ECA has faced and documented during its existence. According to the report, "the crisis in African education" intensified in the 1980s and 1990s, because of rapid population growth and cuts in public spending. Many African countries during this period offered little funding for primary education, and primary school enrollments declined while total enrollment increased. Together with these issues were declining standards, overcrowding, lack of teaching materials, and declining teacher morale. Inadequate facilities and "deteriorating" educational quality also plagued secondary education during the period. Girls were not served at the same level as boys, and fewer girls stayed in school through tertiary education. Higher education as a whole faced low salaries, political issues, lack of materials, student and professor unrest, and university closures. Finally, the number of adult illiterates rose considerably during the last two decades of the twentieth century.

The ECA has served a number of roles in handling educational issues and other sector situations. It helped create the African Development Bank in 1964, and it has assisted in the establishment of a number of other regional organizations and technical institutions. The ECA also helps member nations communicate and cooperate in efforts to tackle issues. Through analyses and reports, the ECA tries to suggest and implement strategical approaches to problem areas, and it also helps evaluate the progress of implemented programs.

As economic development strategies moved away from primarily physical or structural developments and recognized the importance of education and human capital in capacity building, many of the ECA member states adopted international conventions on educational development. A 2001 ECA strategy noted eight "sub-programs," including facilitating economic and social policy analysis, promoting trade and mobilizing finance for development, enhancing food strategy and sustainable development, strengthening development management, harnessing information for development, promoting regional cooperation and integration, promoting the advancement of women, and supporting subregional activities for development.

The African Development Bank (AfDB)

The African Development Bank, a regional multilateral development bank, was established in 1964 and began operations in 1966. The AfDB has seventy-seven shareholder states, including each of the fifty-three African countries and twenty-four nations in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. As a development bank, the AfDB provides: (1) loans and investments for developing countries; (2) technical assistance for development projects, programs, and services; (3) facilitation of public and private capital investment for development; and (4) assistance in policy coordination and planning. Education is one of the AfDB's major sectors of support, and financing includes specific projects, loans, private-sector support, and cofinancing with bilateral and multilateral institutions.

The AfDB did not support an education project during its first nine years of operation. The first education project occurred in Mali in 1975. From 1975 through 1998, education lending represented 6.7 percent of the total lending to all sectors. During that period, over 80 percent of the AfDB's lending in education went to hardware, such as equipment and furniture. In addition to funding hardware, the AfDB has funded training for teachers, administrators, and planners, and construction and rehabilitation. The AfDB has also supported both regional and national projects.

Three publications/conferences had major effects on AfDB educational policy. First, the AfDB published an Education Sector Policy Paper in 1986. Before that time, education accounted for just under 60 percent of the AfDB's social-sector lending. After the policy paper, education accounted for an average of 70 percent of all social-sector spending (from 1985 to 1998). A second milestone was the 1990 Jomtien World Conference on Education for All, which called for gender equality and universal basic education. Prior to 1990 nearly half of all funding went to secondary, general, vocational, and technical education or teacher-training projects. After the Jomtien conference (1991–1998), however, 52.8 percent of the total lending went to basic education.

As Africa's education issues evolved in the last years of the 1990s, the AfDB tried to address challenges, such as globalization, the growth of information technology, the increased role of the private sector, deepening poverty, high unemployment, low human-capital production, extreme population growth, HIV/AIDS and malaria, armed conflicts and population displacement, and unequal access to education. Recognizing that education could both affect and was affected by these issues, the AfDB released a new Education Sector Policy Paper in 1999. This paper listed three priority areas: (1) quality education for all; (2) provision of middle and high-level skills; and (3) organization and management of the education sector. The paper also listed five strategies of improvement: (1) access; (2) equity; (3) quality of instruction and output; (4) management and planning; and (5) financing mechanisms. It also suggested the AfDB's approach would shift from a project-orientation to a sectorwide approach focused on joint financing with governments and institutional partners. Among the areas of interest that had grown since 1986 were girls' education, technology and distance learning, environmental education, population and AIDS education, and peace education.

Some of the areas in need of improvement within education-sector funding, according to the policy paper, included the need to balance qualitative and quantitative approaches, coordinating projects at the community level, participation of beneficiaries and stakeholders, maintenance and sustainability of building and equipment, supervision of projects, and monitoring of evaluations. In addition, Njoki Njoroge Njehû, the director of 50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice, a coalition "dedicated to the profound transformation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund" ("Hearing on U.S. Policy," 2001), noted that the conditions in Africa had not improved substantially during the first thirty-five years of bank lending and that the AfDB, "as it recovers from its management crisis of the 1990s, is losing relevance to most of the people of the continent" by lending to "very few sub-Saharan countries."

See also: International Development Agencies and Education, subentry on United Nations and International Agencies; International Education Statistics; Nongovernmental Organizations and Foundations.

bibliography

African Development Bank/African Development Fund. 1999. Education Sector Policy Paper. Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire: African Development Bank Group.

Ali, Sheikh Rustum. 1992. The International Organizations and World Order Dictionary. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Asian Development Bank. 2001. Education Sector Policy Paper: Draft for Discussion. Manila, Philippines: Asian Development Bank.

Schechter, Michael G. 1998. Historical Dictionary of International Organizations. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

internet resources

African Development Bank. 2002. <http://afdb.org>.

Asian Development Bank. 2002. <http://adb.org>.

Council of Europe. 2002. <www.coe.int>.

European Union. 2001. "Consolidated Version of the Treaty Establishing the European Community." <http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/treaties/dat/ec_cons_treaty_en.pdf>.

European Union. 2001. "Education–Training–Youth." <http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/en/cha/c00003.htm>.

European Union. 2002. <http://europa.eu.int>.

50 Years Is Enough Network. 2001. "Hearing on U.S. Policy toward the African Development Bank and African Development Fund, April 25, 2001: Testimony by Njoki Njoroge Njehû, Director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network." <www.50years.org/update/testimony2.html>.

Inter-American Development Bank. 2001. "OP-743 Education." <www.iadb.org/cont/poli/op-743e.htm>.

Organisation for Economic Coperation and development. 2002. <www.oecd.org>.

Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization. 2000. "SEAMEO Annual Report 1998–1999." <www.seameo.org/vl/library/dlwelcome/publications/anrpt98/index.htm>.

Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization. 2002. <www.seameo.org>.

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. 2001. "Report on the Activities of ECA in the Areas of Human and Social Development as Well as Civil Society: The Years 1997–2001." <www.uneca.org/publications/dmd/old/civil/report.htm>.

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. 2001. "Report on the Work of the ECA, 1998–2000." <www.uneca.org/search_home.htm>.

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. 2002. <www.uneca.org>.

Andrew J. Finch

Katherine Taylor Haynes

UNITED NATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES

Official multilateral development agencies are those that are responsible to and governed by representatives of worldwide organizations. The United Nations (UN), a multilateral organization with a variety of institutional mandates, has many organizations under its umbrella. Other organizations have a single mandate but are similarly broad in scope. A distinction should be made between the multilateral development banks–such as the World Bank–whose projects take the form of loans, and the other multi-lateral development agencies–such as United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)–whose projects take the form of nonreimbursable grants. This entry will describe the history, legacy, importance, and role of international agencies with regard to education.

The World Bank (or the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) The World Bank is an international bank established in 1944 to help member nations reconstruct and develop by guaranteeing loans. The organization has members (both donors and borrowers) who own shares in the bank, although each member nation does not have a vote. Rather, the governance structure is representative in nature, such that one representative may vote on issues for a cluster of nations. It provides loans and technical assistance in many sectors–including education–to reduce poverty and advance sustainable economic growth. There are several types of loans: project loans, macro-policy loans, and sector-policy loans. For each project bank staff work carefully with country counterparts to establish a project covenant or loan agreement, which stipulates the government's commitments, to reform, for example. As part of the loan agreement, when the bank and the country meet to negotiate the loan contract, the bank can establish conditionalities or parameters that commit the country to accomplishing certain changes. Should these benchmarks not be reached, then the bank, according to the terms set out in the contract, can take action.

Educational mission. Education is a cornerstone in the bank's overall mission to help countries fight poverty. The World Bank's mission in education is to assist clients to improve access to relevant learning opportunities, use education resources wisely and fairly, and build stronger institutional capacity. More specifically, the bank works with national ministries of education to identify and implement the countries' strategic steps in order to provide access for all to quality education. The institution works in partnership with the client (or government) as well as other stakeholders, including bilateral-aid agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other members of civil society.

The long-term goal in education is to ensure that everyone completes a basic education of adequate quality, acquires foundation skills (literacy, numeracy, reasoning, and social skills such as teamwork) and has further opportunities to learn advanced skills throughout life, in a range of postbasic education settings.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the bank draws upon four decades of experience in education with approximately 600 projects in 115 countries totaling $26 billion. Although the focus of early projects was on building school infrastructure, increasingly the focus is on improving access to schooling, student attendance, and the quality of education once students are there. Concern for the adequacy of the education has led to greater emphasis on teaching quality and learning achievement. In addition, the concern about a greater demand on limited resources has precipitated a concern about efficiency, including the need for building the institutional capacity required to implement and sustain improvements.

The World Bank made its first loan for education in 1963, and the bank is now the largest single source of external financing for education in developing countries. Since 1980 the total volume of lending for education has tripled, and its share in overall bank lending has doubled. The primary and secondary levels of education are increasingly important; in the fiscal years from 1990 to 1994 these levels represented half of all World Bank lending for education. Early bank lending for education concentrated on Africa, East Asia, and the Middle East, but at the beginning of the twenty-first century lending is significant in all regions. Girls' education is at the forefront, and increasing attention is being given to the educational needs of ethnic minorities and indigenous people. World Bank funds are used less for buildings and more for other educational inputs. The narrow project focus of the past is increasingly giving way to a broad sectoral approach.

The World Bank is strongly committed to continued support for education. However, even though bank funding now accounts for about a quarter of all aid to education, this funding still represents only about 0.5 percent of developing countries' total spending on the sector. Therefore, the World Bank sees its key contribution as advice or technical assistance, designed to help governments develop education policies suitable for the circumstances of their countries. Bank financing will generally be designed to leverage spending and policy change by national authorities. According to World Bank documents, future operations are expected to adopt a more explicit sectorwide policy focus to support changes in educational financing and management. Because of the need to consult key stakeholders, this strategy may increase both the resources and the time needed to prepare projects. In increasingly decentralized contexts, the stakeholders will include not only central governments but also other levels of government, as well as communities, parents, teachers, and employers. Donor cooperation is expected to extend to broad policy advice, as well as investment coordination.

Programs. World Bank programs encourage governments to make education and education reform a higher priority, particularly as economic reform becomes a permanent process. Projects will take more account of outcomes and their relation to inputs, making explicit use of cost—benefit analysis, participatory methods, learning assessments, and improved monitoring and evaluation. The share of basic education in total World Bank lending for education is expected to continue to increase, especially in the poorest countries, which receive International Development Association (IDA) funds. The bank emphasizes a sectoral approach that recognizes the importance of each level of the education system, the interdependencies among levels, and the need to focus bank assistance in areas where the bank can be most useful in the particular circumstances of each country.

At the outset of the twenty-first century, World Bank-supported projects have paid greater attention to equity. This is especially the case in education for girls, for disadvantaged ethnic minorities, and for the poor–and consequently for early childhood education. Projects will support household involvement in school governance and in school choice through an increased emphasis on the regulatory framework for education, on quality-enhancing mechanisms such as outcome monitoring and inspection, on recurrent cost financing, and on demand-side financing mechanisms such as targeted scholarships for the poor, stipends for girls, and student loan schemes for higher education. They will encourage flexible management of instructional resources, complemented by national assessment and examination systems to provide incentives. In all these areas, bank-supported projects are expected to focus more intently on institutional development, including strengthening educational administration and appropriate financial mechanisms, and the bank's staff will pay increased attention to implementation.

Criticism. Criticisms of the World Bank emanate from across the political spectrum, from NGOs as well as committees of the U.S. Congress (e.g., the Meltzer Commission), and are strikingly similar in nature. Critics from the conservative right, such as the Meltzer Commission, argue that institutions such as the World Bank should stop the business of lending and instead serve as development agencies. Critics from the left contend that the bank does not alleviate poverty, but rather condemns citizens of poor nations to chronic debt. Both ends of the political spectrum have registered criticism of the need for reform, restructuring, and revisiting the mission of the bank, an increase in transparency and access to information, and the creation of an independent audit and evaluation unit. Another area of criticism revolves about the issue of conditionalities. The criticisms leveraged by NGOs include mention of the unreasonable restrictions and demands placed on countries by the multilateral development banks, including the World Bank.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

The United Nations Children's Fund is an affiliated agency of the United Nations. It was originally established in 1946 as the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund. UNICEF is concerned with assisting children and adolescents throughout the world, particularly in devastated areas and developing countries. Unlike most United Nations agencies, UNICEF is financed through voluntary contributions from governments and individuals, rather than by regular assessments. National UNICEF committees collaborate with UNICEF in various projects. UNICEF was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965.

UNICEF was created at the end of World War II to relieve the suffering of children in wartorn Europe. It continues to respond rapidly in crises, helping recreate a sense of stability and normalcy, reopening schools and establishing safe spaces for children when armed conflict, war, flood, and other disruptions occur.

The mandate of UNICEF confines its activities and operations to projects intended to benefit children and youth. Unrestricted donations to its budget permit UNICEF to provide assistance on a grant basis and to operate wherever it deems most necessary, independent of political or governmental influence. As part of its mission, UNICEF is committed to the notion that the survival, protection, and development of children are universal imperatives, integral to human progress.

UNICEF currently works in more than 160 countries, areas, and territories on solutions to the problems plaguing poor children and their families and on ways to realize their rights. Its activities vary according to the local challenges presented. They include encouraging the care and stimulation that offer the best possible start in life, helping prevent childhood illness and death, making pregnancy and childbirth safe, and combating discrimination and cooperating with communities to ensure that girls as well as boys attend school. UNICEF works on behalf of children's well-being in other ways. It supports National Immunization Days in the global effort to eradicate polio. It encourages young people to prepare for and participate in issues affecting them. It helps youth resist the onslaught of HIV/AIDS. UNICEF is out in the field at the local level and at the fore, bringing ideas, resources, strategies, and support to bear when and where they are needed most.

UNICEF strives through its country programs to promote the equal rights of girls and women and to support their full participation in the political, social, and economic development of their communities.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is the agency charged with instituting and administering programs for cooperative, coordinated action in education, science, and the arts. The agency promotes education for all, cultural development, protection of the world's natural and cultural heritage, press freedom, and communication. The internal governance structure grants each member nation one representative in the decision-making body of UNESCO and one vote.

Within UNESCO is an International Bureau of Education (IBE) that is responsible for holding conferences on both broad and specific topics within education. This includes international, regional, and country-specific work, including research, technical assistance projects, the provision of data banks and publications to be used by professionals in international organizations, NGOs, ministries of education, and others.

The IBE Documentation and Information Unit has two main tasks: (1) the Internet site with its data banks, and (2) the Documentation Center. The unit manages the IBE's website in general and, to increase the relevance of its services to decision-making processes in member states and to the needs of educational practice, has developed several data banks, which are accessible and regularly updated on the website: (1) INNODATA–innovative projects in the fields of educational content, methods, and teacher education; (2) world data on education; (3) educational profiles–descriptions of national education systems; (4) national reports–full texts of reports presented to the International Conference on Education in 1996; and (5) country dossiers–a compilation of various sources on education. The data banks provide wider access to materials gathered and analyzed at the IBE. These materials are available for local consultation in the Documentation Center. UNESCO is heavily involved in numerous education-related endeavors, which include associated schools, the production of basic learning materials, drug-abuse prevention programs, early childhood and family development programs, promotion of Education for All, educational facilities, elearning, emergency assistance, girls and women in Africa, higher education, HIV/AIDS work, the literacy decade project, poverty eradication, primary education, science and technology, special needs education, street and working children, sustainable future, and technical and vocational education.

In addition, it provides more than half a dozen networks for communication among practitioners, policymakers, and people interested in education-related topics. UNESCO also works to build partnerships among key stakeholders in the education policy process, including intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), NGOs and other UN agencies.

A learning materials project, the Basic Learning Materials Initiative (BLM) is based on the premise that successful materials-development strategies must include mechanisms for generating a wide range of printed materials needed by a reading society. The development of a viable local publishing industry in each country is a necessary element of such strategies. The creation of a well-functioning system for the production and distribution of basic learning materials may be a first step toward creating a literate society and a market for books and other printed materials. This project seeks to address the scarcity of books, magazines, newspapers, and even posters in the developing world and to provide learning materials for the classroom environment, which is often the only place where children encounter words in written form. Textbooks provide the main resource for teachers, enabling them to animate the curricula and give life to the subjects taught in the classroom. The importance of books to the quality of education and rates of educational achievement has been well documented. But the goal of Education for All also involves the development of literate societies in the developing world and cannot be attained solely by providing quality learning materials to schools. If people are to stay literate, they must have access to a wide variety of written materials and continue the habit of reading in their adult lives.

Like any large organization, UNESCO has not been immune to controversy. In the 1980s it suffered accusations of mismanagement, which precipitated the withdrawal of three nations: the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. Although the latter two have returned, UNESCO closed its Washington, DC, office definitively in 2001.

International Labor Organization (ILO)

The ILO formulates policies and programs to improve working conditions and employment opportunities and defines international labor standards as guidelines for governments. It settles labor disputes and establishes guidelines for acceptable labor practices. In the field of education, the ILO is involved in issues regarding teaching personnel, including initial preparation, further education and recruitment of teachers, the conditions of employment and work, and the extent of teacher's participation in decision-making processes of public and private educational authorities that affect teaching and learning. The internal governance structure grants each member nation one representative in the decision-making body of ILO and one vote. The philosophical basis of all ILO operations is the equal tripartite partnership of labor, business, and government, with representatives of all three on most internal commissions.

The ILO established the In Focus Program on Strengthening Social Dialogue to strengthen and promote the practice of social dialogue in ILO-member states as a means of sharing information among labor administrations, trade unions, and employers' associations, as well as developing consensus on policy approaches and practical measures to ensure equitable social and economic development. Social dialogue is understood to include all types of negotiations, consultations, or exchange of information between or among the tripartite and bipartite partners on issues of common interest relating to economic and social policy. As such, it plays a pivotal role in identifying the important labor and social issues of the ILO's constituents and in realizing fundamental principles and rights at work promoted by the ILO.

World Health Organization (WHO)

The World Health Organization is the international directing and coordinating authority for information on international health work, which strives to bring the highest quality health to all people. Health is defined in the WHO constitutions as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. In support of its main goal, the WHO works to promote technical cooperation; assist governments at their behest to strengthen health services, to provide appropriate technical assistance and, in emergencies, necessary aid; to stimulate and advance work on the prevention and control of epidemic, endemic, and other diseases; and to promote, in cooperation with other specialized agencies, the improvement of nutrition, housing, sanitation, recreation, economic or working conditions, and other aspects of environmental hygiene. The internal governance structure grants each member nation one representative in the decision-making body of WHO and one vote.

As part of an educational mission of sorts, the WHO works to promote and coordinate biomedical and health services research. It also promotes improved standards of teaching and training in health, medical, and related professions.

The WHO conducts numerous health-education programs for the benefit of health care professionals and health care beneficiaries. Such health-education programs include, for example, teaching medical students about diarrheal diseases, programs to prevent and reduce the use of tobacco, and health education in food safety. The role of education at the WHO is to aptly disseminate information about ways to prevent and cure disease.

The WHO serves as a conduit to numerous sources of health and medical information as well as health initiatives. The WHO Global School Health Initiative, for example, seeks to mobilize and strengthen health and education activities at the local, national, regional, and global levels. The initiative is designed to improve the health of students, school personnel, families, and other members of the community through schools. Another example is that of the WHO Healthy Cities Project in which attention is given to the principle that health can be improved by modifying living conditions, that is, the physical, environmental, social, and economic factors that affect or determine people's health. The home, the school, the village, the workplace, or the city are all places or settings where people live and work. Health status is often determined more by the conditions in these settings than by the provision of health care facilities.

The WHO has extended collaboration with a number of organizations. One such example is WHO's collaboration with the Industry Council for Development (ICD) and the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), both NGOs in official relations with WHO. Some of their joint activities include (1) the Second Asian Conference on Food Safety; (2) Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point training in several countries; (3) training of nutritionists in food safety in Indonesia; and (4) development of a food safety program in Indonesia.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is an intergovernmental, multilateral organization created to boost standards of living through improving nutrition, agricultural productivity, and the conditions of rural populations. This is accomplished through development strategies and projects undertaken in cooperation with both national governments and other organizations. The FAO is the largest of the many specialized organizations in the UN system. The FAO's 180 member states and one member organization, the European Community, form the FAO Conference, which meets every two years to determine policy and approve a budget. Each member nation has one representative at the conference. The conference also elects a council of 49 member nations, which form the executive organ of the organization. The council meets at least three times between each conference session, and each of the 49 member nations has one vote. Council representatives are selected for three-year terms.

Founded in 1945, the FAO moved its headquarters from Washington, DC, to Rome, Italy, in 1951. The FAO has eight departments: Administration and Finance, Agriculture, Economic and Social, Fisheries, Forestry, General Affairs and Information, Sustainable Development, and Technical Cooperation. Education programming falls primarily under the control of the Sustainable Development department.

The Sustainable Development (SD) department has four main components: communication for development, education, extension, and research and technology. According to the FAO, it gives priority to basic education through promoting and supporting initiatives aimed at improving children's health and capacity to learn, using technology and distance education, educating rural girls and women, and promoting lifelong education and skills for life in a rural environment. However, the SD expands beyond basic education to improve the quality of all levels of education by supporting curriculum development and teacher training. The FAO tries to respond to the needs of farmers and rural communities by assisting agricultural universities to better serve farmers and to interact with basic and secondary educators. In addition, the SD encourages debate on future trends in education and training in agriculture, rural development, and food security; researches practices and case studies; supports partnerships for education for rural development; and provides technical assistance for the training of policymakers and managers.

Youth programming includes a Youth Network for Food and Security and various exchange programs. The goal is to provide education and training to prepare future farmers and community planners.

The SD agriculture extension service does much of its work through universities and extension-research-education linkages. This involves fostering interaction between academic staff and students, with members of local farming communities, and supporting collaborative problem solving.

The FAO further assists in human-resource capacity building through efforts to improve literacy, health and nutrition, and economic well-being. The FAO Nutrition Education and Training Group works with governments to provide training about nutrition and dietary habits. The Policy Assistance Division assists with capacity building through policymaker training.

A 1997 FAO report available on the FAO Internet site in the SD area titled "Agricultural Education and Training: Issues and Opportunities" outlines some of the changes that have affected agricultural education. These include advances in communications technology, decreasing proportions of economically active populations dependent upon agriculture and an increasing marginalization of agriculture and rural life, population increases, scientific progress, changing market demands and employment opportunities, and the increasing recognition of the roles of women in the sector.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees helps resettle people who have left their home countries due to a fear of persecution and who either do not want to or cannot return to their homelands. The UNHCR has two basic goals. First, it aims to protect refugees, and second, it tries to help refugees normalize their lives again. According to the UNHCR women, children, and the elderly comprise 80 percent of the typical refugee population, and the organization attempts to meet their basic needs. For children, this includes education projects.

The UNHCR views education services as meeting psychological needs; restoring structure to children, families, and communities; and helping prevent conflict by providing alternatives to joining armed groups. The UNHCR funds governments and NGOs to construct, rebuild, and operate schools for children and adolescents. Many of these projects are small-scale, quick-impact projects of building and repairs. Although most of the UNHCR's activities are focused on primary and secondary schools, it also provides for literacy classes and vocational training for adults.

The UNHCR tries to use familiar languages and the curriculum from refugees' home countries. In some instances, refugee status might be long-term, and in those cases the UNHCR combines curriculum from countries of origin and the host countries. In cases where a host country forbids education of refugee youth, the UNHCR negotiates on behalf of the refugees.

Beyond direct assistance to refugees and their teachers, the UNHCR also provides information and curriculum materials for teachers worldwide. These resources are provided with the goal of expanding awareness of historical issues and current refugee situations. These efforts can be preventive and build assistance possibilities.

The UNHCR was established with a three-year mandate in 1950 to help resettle refugees left homeless in Europe following World War II. The UN has extended the mandate every five years. It began as a small agency and gradually expanded to offices in 120 countries. It has faced resistance from some countries either unwilling to provide assistance to fleeing civilians or willing to help only temporarily.

See also: International Educational Agreements; Nongovernmental Organizations and Foundations.

bibliography

Heyneman, Stephen P. 1986. Investing in Education: A Quarter Century of World Bank Experience. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Heyneman, Stephen P. 1993. "Educational Quality and the Crisis in Educational Research." International Review of Education 39:511–517.

Heyneman, Stephen P. 1998. "Educational Cooperation between Nations in the Twenty-First Century." In Education for the Twenty-First Century: Issues and Prospect. Paris: UNESCO.

Heyneman, Stephen P. 1999. "Development Aid in Education: A Personal View." International Journal of Educational Development 19:183–190.

Heyneman, Stephen P. 1999. "The Sad Story of Education Statistics in UNESCO." International Journal of Educational Development 19:65–74.

internet resources

Food and Agriculture Organization of the united Nations. 1996. "Human Resource and Institutional Capacity Building through Agricultural Education." <www.fao.org/sd/exdirect/exan0015.htm>.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 1999. "Agricultural Education for Sustainable Rural Development: Challenges for Developing Countries in the Twenty-First Century." <www.fao.org/sd/exdirect/exan0025.htm>.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 2001. "Sustainable Development Dimensions." <www.fao.org/sd>.

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. 2001. "General Information." <www.osce.org/general>.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2001. <www.unhcr.ch>.

Katherine Taylor Haynes

Andrew J. Finch