Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday urged the world leaders to seize the moment to forge a strong partnership for the common good of global humanity as the world is now moving towards recovery from the pandemic fallouts.
“May I entreat that as the world is now moving on the way to recovery from the pandemic, let’s seize the moment to forge a strong partnership for the common good of our global humanity,” she said.
Sheikh Hasina said this while speaking at a programme here at the UNESCO headquarters marking the 75th Anniversary of UNESCO with its Director-General Audrey Azoulay in the chair.
She said the 75th anniversary is a unique moment to celebrate the achievements while it is also an important occasion to introspect and revisit the organization’s activities for the next 25 years leading to its centenary.
“The pandemic menace has taken lives, and changed our lives. It has also taught us to survive through innovative acts and speed,” she said.
The Prime Minister put forward a four-point proposal before the global community.
Raising the proposals, she said, “First, the pandemic has severely disrupted the education system. For recovery, there’s a need for a global plan to prioritise learning by investing in digital tools and services, access to internet, digital content, and capacity building of teachers,” she said.
Secondly, Hasina said, public-private partnership must be forged for creating a technology-assisted meaningful learning environment.
In her third point, the PM said, Covid-19 vaccines must be considered as a global public good. We must ensure its access to all, especially students and educators worldwide,” she said.
In the 4th proposal, she said the benefit of science and scientific research must be harnessed for the welfare of peoples, with technology transfer at the core.
The PM mentioned that Bangladesh’s commitment to the principles of UNESCO is reflected by its early membership in 1972. “We consider this organization as one of the most effective platforms for promoting global peace and collective prosperity,” she said.
Guided by the peace-centric foreign policy of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, she said Bangladesh always remains at the forefront of global peace initiatives. “Our participation in UN peacekeeping as the top contributor is one such case,” she added.
As a proponent of a culture of peace, Bangladesh has been disseminating the message of peace through instilling tolerance and respect, Hasina said.
“To do this, we’ve chosen education, science, culture and communications as effective tools. Our investment is particularly enormous in education with targeted interventions like stipends, gender-sensitive approach, school-feeding programmes and ICT education,” she said.
Hasina mentioned that some 400 million free textbooks are distributed among around 42 million students in the beginning of school years.
The PM said the Digital Bangladesh vision has been preparing, through ICT based learning, the future generations for the 4th Industrial Revolution.
“We’ve launched ICT in our Education Master Plan under which about 83,000 schools were provided with ICT devices, and 3,26,936 teachers trained,” she said.
Source: United News of Bangladesh