On October 26 1966 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) declared September 8, as International Literacy Day with the aim to remove worldwide issues of illiteracy. The main purpose was not only to combat illiteracy but also to use it as a tool to empower individuals as well as the whole community.
This year International Literacy Day will be celebrated worldwide under the theme, ‘Promoting literacy for a world in transition: Building the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies’, as per UNESCO.
UNESCO states that, this year it will be an opportunity to join efforts to accelerate progress towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) on education and lifelong learning and to reflect on the role of literacy in building more inclusive, peaceful, just, and sustainable societies.
In doing so, it will embrace the reciprocal relations between literacy and other areas of development: Literacy is central to the creation of such societies, while progress in other areas of development contributes to generating interest and motivation of people to acquire, use, and further develop their literacy and numeracy skills.
Further, rapidly changing global context took a new meaning over the past years, hampering the literacy progress and widening inequalities across world regions, countries, and populations. In low- and middle-income countries, the share of 10-year-old children who could not read and understand a simple text with comprehension has increased from 57 per cent in 2019 to an estimated 70 per cent in 2022, says UNESCO.
