International Literacy Day, devoted this year to the connection between literacy and sustainable development, provides us with an opportunity to remember a simple truth: literacy not only changes lives, it saves them.
國際掃盲日今年的主題是掃盲與可持續發展的聯系，它讓我們想起一個簡單的道理：掃盲改變生活，甚至拯救生命。
Literacy helps reduce poverty and enables people to find jobs and obtain higher salaries. It is one of the most efficient ways of improving the health of mothers and children, understanding doctors' prescriptions and gaining access to healthcare. The lives of more than two million children under the age of five were saved between 1990 and 2009 thanks to improvements in the education of women of reproductive age. Literacy facilitates access to knowledge and triggers a process of empowerment and self-esteem that benefits everyone. This energy, multiplied by millions of people, is essential to the future of societies.
掃盲可以減貧、謀職、提薪。它是改善母子健康、看懂醫生處方或得到治療的最有效途徑之一。由于在育齡婦女教育方面取得的進步，1990至2009年間有二百多萬五歲以下的兒童得以生命安康。掃盲利于獲得知識，培養自立和自信，使所有人受益。眾人拾柴所產生的這種能量承載著社會的未來。
Today, 781 million adults worldwide cannot read, write or count. Two thirds of them are women. More than 250 million children are unable to read a single sentence, even though half of them have spent four years in school. What kind of societies do we expect to build with an illiterate youth? This is not the kind of world we wish to live In. We want a world where everyone can participate in the destiny of their societies, gain access to knowledge and enrich it in turn. To succeed, we must also change the traditional approach of literacy programmes to encompass, beyond reading and writing in the narrower sense, broader skills with regard to consumption and sustainable lifestyles, the conservation of biodiversity, poverty reduction, disaster risk reduction as well as civic participation. In these ways, literacy programmes can unlock their full transformative potential.
今天世界上有7.81億成年人不會讀、寫和計算，其中三分之二是婦女。有2.5億多兒童連一個句子都讀不下來，盡管他們中有一半人上過四年學。如果青年人目不識丁，我們還指望建設怎樣的社會呢？這不是我們冀求的世界。我們冀求一個人人能夠參與社會命運、獲得知識并豐富知識的社會。若想成功，我們還應改變掃盲計劃的傳統方法，除了嚴格意義上的讀寫能力之外，還要培養在消費和可持續生活方式、生物多樣性保護、減貧、降低災害風險、公民參與等方面的更廣泛的能力。只有這樣掃盲計劃才能釋放出變革的潛能。
Commitment to these goals will be central to the forthcoming Aichi-Nagoya conference on education for sustainable development to be held in Japan this November. It will also be at the heart of the World Education Forum to be held next year in Incheon, Republic of Korea, to lead the global debate towards the adoption of new sustainable development goals at the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. UNESCO is working across the world - in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal and elsewhere - to ensure that literacy is integrated into national development strategies. The Global Partnership for Girls' and Women's Education and the Malala Fund for Girls' Right to Education, launched by UNESCO, also focus on literacy. The programmes acknowledged by the UNESCO-Confucius Prize for Literacy and the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize enable us each year to celebrate innovative practices that show that achievement is within our reach. New technologies, including mobile telephones, also offer freshopportunities for literacy for all. We must invest more, and I appeal to every Member State and all our partners to redouble efforts - political and financial - to ensure that literacy is fully recognized as one of the most powerful accelerators of sustainable development. The future we want starts with the alphabet.
該承諾將是11月在日本愛知縣名古屋舉辦的下屆可持續發展教育會議的中心議題，也是明年在大韓民國仁川舉辦的世界教育論壇的核心議題，論壇期間將展開全球討論，爭取在2015年的聯合國大會上通過新的可持續發展目標。在阿富汗、孟加拉國、柬埔寨、埃及、尼日利亞、塞內加爾以及別的國家，教科文組織奔走于世界各地，將掃盲納入各國的發展戰略中。教科文組織發起的"女童和婦女教育全球伙伴關系"和馬拉拉女童教育權基金也以掃盲為重點。教科文組織孔子獎和教科文組織世宗國王獎的獎勵計劃每年表彰一些被證明行之有效的創新做法。新技術，特別是移動電話也為全民掃盲提供了新的可能性。我們在這方面應加大投入，借此掃盲日之機，我呼吁所有會員國和所有合作伙伴在政治和財政上加倍付出，使人人認識到掃盲是可持續發展的最強大推動力之一。我們冀望的未來始于識字。
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