I am very pleased to join you for this vitally important gathering. A decade later, we have moved some steps closer to that world. The cost of delay is already unconscionably high. Too many young children are denied the good care that they need to prepare their minds and bodies to learn. And too many young people and adults are still denied access to the knowledge and development of skills they need to build a better future.
Education is a key to the fulfilment of other human rights.
It is the heart of all development. And it is the essential prerequisite for equality, dignity, and lasting peace. Ensuring the right of education is a matter of morality and of justice. It is also a matter of economic common sense, for in this new and information-driven century, the world simply cannot afford the loss of so much human potential. But unless we act now, more and more children will grow up uneducated, illiterate, without skills, without hope.