"Development Goals for the Millennium"

A commitment was made by 191 heads of state and of governments to meet the said "Development Goals for the Millennium" within 15 years. Only three years remain to reach the final objective.

Objectives relating to women were prioritised:

1. Achieve Universal Primary Schooling: 115 million children of school age do not attend school; 94% of whom are girls in developing countries.
2. Promote gender equality and autonomy for women: In the world we live in, two thirds of illiterate people are women.  The rate of female employment is 2 /3 of that for men.
3. Reduce infant mortality: In the world we live in, 11 million children under the age of 5 die every year. The majority of the illnesses are curable.
4. Improve maternal health: More than 500,000 women die each year from pregnancy complications.

Life expectancy in many countries in Africa is 48-54 years. It is a young and very large population, of 1,000 million inhabitants, which deserves the attention and support of developed countries. Attention and focus should be put on areas of sanitation and education, which would make it possible to raise level of consciousness and be, in a big way, part of the solution of the preceding objectives.

There is no denying that Africans themselves are conscious of the transcendence of taking account of women and, therefore, we must give them the opportunity to reach this goal by themselves, with the assistance of countries outside Africa which respects their cultures and their singularity at the same time.

Mireia Lodroño, a Montblanc Foundation volunteer, told us, in Reus on the 10th of last month, of her experience in the D.R. of Congo and the Ivory Coast and illustrated the narration with situations that she experienced in person.

She worked in putting in place colleges that need to make Africans want to attend. “The professors and the education plan as much as the style of the centre has to be of the style of the country in question – Mireia states – not an imported European style, although there are common elements to all countries which can be adopted for the satisfaction of all”.

To conclude, Mireia highlights in this conference that to improve the situation of women in Africa that improvement in education has to be intensified, as a Congolese proverb goes “To educate a woman is to educate a village and to educate a village is to educate a society".