Educationist and Policy Analyst
H.E. Dr. Hajo Sani Oon
Ambassador, Permanent Delegation of Nigeria to UNESCO | Nigeria
Short Bio:
Dr. Hajo Sani Oon is an Educationist and Policy Analyst with extensive experience in teaching and public administration. She holds degrees in Education, Guidance and Counseling, and Public Administration. Dr. Sani served as a school principal for twelve years and as Minister of Women Affairs from 1997 to 1998, where she defended Nigeria’s CEDAW reports at the UN. She authored influential books on women’s issues, including “Women and National Development: The Way Forward” (2001), and founded the NGO Women and National Development (WAND).
Her other notable works include “First Ladyship and Empowerment Programmes in Nigeria” (2010) and “Women and Leadership” (2012). She has been active in various committees, including the UN Women Civil Society Advisory Group (CSAG), and received the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) in 2006. Dr. Sani worked with the Society for Family Health (SFH) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and was appointed Senior Special Assistant to the President on Women Affairs in 2015. In 2021, she became Nigeria’s Ambassador and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO in Paris.
Event: SDGs Conference 2024 | Date: Sept 25, 2024 |
SPEECH
Excellencies, fellow panelists, colleagues, distinguished ladies and gentlemen. Let me start by expressing my appreciation to the Journalists and Writers Foundation for inviting me to speak at the annual SDGs Conference 2024 on the role of education in achieving the Pact for the Future. My reflections will be on what the Pact aims to achieve. How did we get here from the SDGs dispensation and what is the role of education?
We cannot speak about the Pact of the Future in isolation from Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and the 17 distinct but interworking development goals. SDG 4, spearheaded by UNESCO, aims to ensure inclusive, equitable, and quality education, promoting long-life learning for 10 targets covering primary and secondary education to increase the supply of qualified teachers in developing countries. Despite some progress, the agenda is currently behind on its commitments while implementation experience brought the realization that education remains a major factor in achieving the other goals. Furthermore, the SDG 4 objectives have been met with more unexpected negative experiences, especially the COVID-19 pandemic, global conflicts, financial crisis, and inflation with devastating impacts on education, particularly the learning process.
The midterm reality informed the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to put the SDGs back on track starting from realizing Our Common Agenda, the Transforming Education Summit and Pact for the Future are the latest in the series setting the tone for the agenda beyond 2030. Although education is not a standalone action in the Pact, all 58 points demonstrate its importance to achievement. Education has and will continue to play a significant role in sustainable development. Therefore, to address the role of education in the Pact for the Future, I would dwell on four points. First, how the educational policies can be better designed to ensure gender equality and empower women and girls as a follow-up to the commitments. Action number eight in particular aims for gender equality, the empowerment of all women and girls across all SDGs and targets.
This is also in line with SDG 5 whose objective is to streamline the educational system for gender focus programs benefiting students and learners of all ages and grades. Let me draw attention to UNESCO`s transforming mentalities program, which promotes lifelong learning in civic and gender education with men taking the lead as advocates. Under this scheme, members are encouraged to develop programs for life skills and social transformation. Others are accelerating girls’ enrollment, lifelong gender learning, and incentives for women to take an interest in STEM education and profession as well as leadership roles. Implementing the Pact for the Future should emphasize the following mention: promoting gender equality should start by upgrading and updating the national curriculum for girls’ and women’s empowerment and gender-sensitive education at all levels.
What strategy can be employed in the education system to align with the SDGs as outlined in the Pact and the 58 actions embodied in the SDGs? They address further threats to achievements such as protecting education during emergencies, economic empowerment and social cohesion in uncertainties, and adapting to new emerging technologies. UNESCO’s program on education for sustainable development provides a clue to a system that aligns components such as environmental, development, and global citizenship education. The recently adopted recommendations on education for peace and human rights are gender equality in the digital area. They prescribe education systems that effectively improve resilience to climate-driven crises, dealing with their precautions while not causing further damage to the planet. Global citizenship education is essential to prepare learners who value human dignity, cooperation, and dialogue to have a new understanding of peace as not just the absence of violence and conflicts, but also a positive and dynamic process that nurtures the ability to value coexistence and take care of the planet. These are pointers to the right strategy.
My next highlight is the primary challenges in implementing educational policies that support the SDGs and commitments of the Pact for the Future. The functional curriculum regarding the SDGs-related life skills is a challenge. Teachers are in short supply, lacking professional development opportunities, low status and working conditions, and capacity to develop leadership, autonomy, and innovation. Another alarming issue is education in conflict and emergencies where instabilities of stroke learning, including those resulting from war, climate change policies to support sustainable development must improve the station of teachers’ responsiveness to emergencies with innovative and community-based approaches and lifelong cognitive learning.
What future-oriented strategy should be prioritized in the educational system to ensure they contribute effectively to the long-term Sustainable Development Goals? We must focus on teaching sustainability from the youngest age, nurturing environmentally conscious learners, and a new set of global citizens who have not only academic success but are trained to take personal responsibilities. Lastly, since all education initiatives will be void in the face of limited access, deploying new and emerging digital technologies to improve access to holistic education should be a priority. This will include cooperation to overcome the barriers of the digital divide and to build the capacity of disadvantaged regions for connectivity and digital equipment for equity.