Time for Transition: A Mid-Term Review of Progress in Attaining the Employment and Income Distribution Objectives of the Second United Nations Development Decade.

The current concern with the human environment, which has given rise, in part, to the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, comes at a time when the energies, efforts, and resources of the developing countries are being harnessed as never before to achieve their respective development objectives. The compelling urgency of the third world's development efforts found endorsement in the proposals for the Second United Nations Development Decade (DD II). While to a large extent the concern with environmental issues has arisen out of the problems experienced by the industrially advanced countries, the developing countries are not unconcerned with or even immune from these problems. It was with this general thinking in mind that the Preparatory Committee for the Second United Nations Development Decade unanimously decided to include in the strategy for the decade the following statement which was accepted by the General Assembly: “Governments will intensify national and international efforts to arrest the deterioration of the human environment and to take measures towards its improvement and to promote activities that will help to maintain the ecological balance on which human survival depends.” The General Assembly in a recent resolution on the matter of the human environment further affirmed that environmental policies should be considered in the context of economic and social development, with account taken of the special needs of development in developing countries.

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Policies and Progress Towards Universal Primary Education

The Journal of Modern African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0022278x00020164 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 19 (4) ◽

pp. 547-563

Author(s):

Mark Bray

Keyword(s):

United Nations ◽

Primary Education ◽

National Policy ◽

Economic Conditions ◽

Universal Primary Education ◽

Primary Schooling ◽

Development Decade ◽

Nations Development

In 1961, soon after the beginning of the first United Nations Development Decade, a conference of African Ministers of Education was convened by Unesco. The meeting resolved, inter alia, that by the year 1980 primary schooling throughout the continent should be ‘universal, compulsory and free’.1 As we have now reached that date, it is appropriate to review progress. A few countries have achieved the goal, but many others have fallen short. This article will examine the experience of the last two decades, and assess its implications for ultimate objectives and the strategies for achieving them. Despite national policy variations and divergent social and economic conditions, instructive overall patterns may be discerned.

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