International Literacy Day 2020: Know the significance, theme and importance

New Delhi: September 8 is marked as International Literacy Day all over the world to raise awareness and remind people about the importance of education to individuals and communities around the world. The UNESCO in the year 1966 had made the declaration of the day in its 14th session of general conference.

Every year the United Nations (UN) gives special themes to this day keeping in line with the current environment. This year the theme has been kept keeping in concern the global Covid-19 pandemic, and it focuses on “Literacy teaching and learning in the Covid-19 crisis and beyond.” Earlier, there have been themes like ‘Literacy and Health’, ‘Literacy and Epidemics’, which focused on communicable diseases such as HIV, to ‘Literacy and Empowerment’ and ‘Literacy and Peace’ etc.

On this occasion, Union Education minister of India Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank said on Twitter,"There can be no joy greater than reading and no friend greater than knowledge" Hon'ble PM Shri @narendramodi On this #InternationalLiteracyDay, we promise to work towards achieving 100% literacy by complying with the reforms within the National Education Policy 2020.''

"There can be no joy greater than reading and no friend greater than knowledge" Hon'ble PM Shri @narendramodi
On this #InternationalLiteracyDay, we promise to work towards achieving 100% literacy by complying with the reforms within the National Education Policy 2020. pic.twitter.com/HnG0e8WGra — Dr. Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank (@DrRPNishank) September 8, 2020

As per UNESCO, about 773 million adults lack the minimum education that is required to be literate worldwide and of those, 60.7 million children are out of school or are rare attendees. It said that this global health crisis has been a stark reminder of the existing gap between policy discourse and reality and they aim to shorten this gap by increasing awareness about lifelong literacy learning. 

Every year UNESCO also picks up five country which have made best efforts to promote literacy and this year Ghana, Mexico, Nepal, United Kingdom and Yemen received the award.