Country Background
Senegal, officially the Republic of Senegal, is located in West Africa on the Atlantic Ocean, and is bordered by Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau and surrounds most of Gambia. The country gained its independence in June 20, 1960 from France. The country is 197,000 square kilometers. Some 39 languages are spoken in Senegal, including French (the official language) and Arabic. Linguists divide the African languages spoken there into two families: Atlantic and Mande. The Atlantic family, generally found in the western half of the country, contains the languages most widely spoken in Senegal—Wolof, Serer, Fula, and Diola. Other languages include Pular, Jola, Mandinka and Soninke. Senegal is a republic with a President, currently Macky Sall, who has served since march of 2012. Since 2001, Senegal has voted for their president, who serves on a five year term. Senegal has more than 80 political parties. The parliament is the National assembly, which has 150 seats within. Senegal has a population of 15,020,945. Of the ethnic groups in the region, 37.1% are Wolof, 26.2% Pular, and 17% Seker to make up the three largest groups. 96% of the population is Muslim, while the remaining is Christian. 41.15% are ages 0-14, mainly due to the desire of having large families, and a fertility rate of 4.5 children per woman. Ages 15-24 have 20.33%, while ages 25-54 makeup 31.45% of the population. Most of the population is in the west, with Dakar being a core area. 47% of the total population is urban. Dakar, the capital city, has a population of 3 million people. Education expenditures: 7.1% of GDP (2015). 52% literacy rate of the entire population. 65% of boys, but only 40% of girls. Students attend school for about 9 years. The GDP of Senegal is $54.8 billion as of 2017, which saw a 7.2% growth rate from 2016 at $51.15 billion. The GDP is split 16.9% for agriculture, 24.3% for industry, and 58.8% towards services. The total unemployment rate is at 48%, third worst in the world. The economy is led by mining, construction, tourism, and fishing and agriculture (mostly done in rural areas). Key exports are phosphate mining, fertilizer production, agricultural products and commercial fishing. They also pursue a oil exploration projects. President Macky Sall led a reformist policy agenda that was burdened with high energy costs and a culture of overspending. Under his new ambitious plan, the Emerging Senegal plan, which implements priority economic reforms and investment projects and economic growth while preserving stability and debt sustainability. They receive technical support from the International Monetary Fund under a policy support instrument to help implement ESP. The government is focusing on 19 key projects, including the Thiès-Touba highway, new international airport opened in December 2017, and improvements to energy infrastructure. The cost for electricity is the biggest constraint in Senegal, since prices are among the highest in the world. Unesco world heritage sites in Senegal include 5 cultural and 2 natural. Cultural include Bassari county, island of Gorée, island of saint louis, Saloum Delta, and Stone Circles of Senegambia. The natural sites are the Djoudj national bird sanctuary, and the Niokolo-Koba national park.
Topic 1: Protecting Languages and Preserving Cultures
Out of the 6,500 languages spoken throughout the world, there around 10 languages that are spoken by around half the world. With these 10 common languages, many indigenous tongues are simply forgotten, or even lost, at a rapid decline. Taking into account the many government’s belief of one culture This is a problem as it is both risky and extremely expensive to get rid of indigenous languages and keep one national language and culture. According to the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, 90 percent of the world’s languages are at risk of disappearing in the next 100 years.
UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger lists 576 as critically endangered, the highest numbers occur in the Americas. With most indigenous knowledge being passed down orally through the generations, and fewer and fewer young people learning linguistic traditions from their elders, the vast archive of traditional knowledge is at risk of being lost forever.
Over the past century alone, around 400 languages – about one every three months – have gone extinct, and most linguists estimate that 50% of the world’s remaining 6,500 languages will be gone by the end of this century (some put that figure as high as 90%, however). With this impending extinction of languages, there must be something placed to slow down, or even stop, this rapid decline. It’s necessary to conserve these lost languages for the preservation of cultures as well, language is almost directly linked to cultures. The delegation of Senegal proposes the GOOD plan. Government Organized Observational Database. This will be a database that collects the indigenous languages of the country the government runs, and brings them together. This will be a program that not only ensures the preservation of written languages, but also provides the user to learn the language as well as the culture through similarities with their mother language and their own culture. As an online database, the GOOD plan can reach people all around the world. Unlike written solutions such as books, the GOOD plan is able to stay updated and can be used in various ways.
The GOOD plan can also provide accessors with whatever they want of the 6,500 languages spoken today. They’re not especially limited to the big 10. For example, if a person were speaking Mandarin Chinese and wanted to expand their learning, they are able to take Cantonese online for no cost.
If a language on the database were to lose its last remaining native speaker, the database would automatically put it on the main page as a lost language, advocating for the users to learn the language, rendering the language as not lost, but relearned.
Topic 2: Promoting Development and Education for Rural Communities
There have been many efforts placed to promote development and education for rural communities, however, none have gotten close to allowing all rural communities to have education. While improvements in education have been seen in the last few decades, these numbers still prove that the world has a long way to go to ensure every child in the world has access to free, quality education. Literacy rates have greatly improved form where they were in 1976, but the data also shows that around the world, in forty years men and women saw 12.8 and 21.1 percent improvement, respectively. This is a major step forward in the education of women in particular, but leaves a lot to be done to increase adult literacy rates worldwide.
There are a number of reasons as to why children in rural and developing communities aren’t fully educated and still illiterate. A few would be Lack of reliable communication. Many students don’t have internet access at home, or reliable cell phone service. As a result, it’s very difficult to give the students homework, as many of them don’t have the ability to look up resources at home, post their work, or get into contact to get help. Because many students live on farms, when they are not at school or in sports, many of them are doing chores around the house. This puts more strain on their time to do work outside of school. There is very little assistance from parents with anything school related that isn’t sports. There is also a low rate of students going to college, as many of the parents discourage higher education. There are also days where a student will get pulled out of school to go help on the farm in the middle of the day. There is a lot less funding for rural areas as well, as much of the resources of rural schools (books, supplies, etc) comes from the teachers. Another reason would be students living in homes with limited food, or only intermittent access to running water/ electricity. This comes with a whole host of challenges, not only in school work, but also in limited ability to participate in extracurricular activities. All contribute factors as to why children in rural and developing communities aren’t educated.
The delegation of Senegal proposes the PAN plan, standing for Paying Back, Absenteeism reduction, and Nutrition plan. Across the world, the first step to improving students’ education is to physically get them to school in the first place. For many countries, particularly in rural areas, a number of children drop out at the end of primary school to help support their families. To reduce the dropout rates from this, Mexico came up with Progresa (now renamed Prospera), a conditional cash transfer initiative. The programme provides a fixed monetary transfer to families if their children attend at least 85% of school days, and receive regular health check-ups. The amount of aid increases as children age to match the rising opportunity cost of income if they were working instead of in school. As Mexico was able to reduce drop-out rates through paying the families back, the PAN plan will show how funds will actually be saved transfering funds to families if their children attend at least 85% of school days as well, as the Absenteeism reduction part will save enough money to pay back children’s families.
As absenteeism is another problem in rural communities, the PAN plan will specifically target teachers who end up not coming to schools in rural areas. High levels of teacher absenteeism is common in both remote and urban areas in many developing countries across Asia, Africa, and South America. It not only negatively affects students’ learning outcomes, but is also very costly – absent teachers across rural India cost the government up to $1.5 billion per year. Indonesia has one of the highest rates of teacher absenteeism at 25%. This led to the government launching the KIAT Guru Pilot in 2016. The initiative enlists local community representatives to monitor the performance of teachers, who may receive special allowances based on these evaluations. The PAN plan will replicate the KIAT Guru Pilot’s policies as well as include other solutions such as a significant punishment for having a specific amount of unexcused absences.
Providing nutrition to children in rural areas is extremely hard, but as their parents often have to leave for work very early in the mornings, many children in poor villages have to walk hours to school on an empty stomach. Parents are also worried about their children’s safety if they attempt to cook alone. Many families opt to take their children to the fields with them, where they can be fed, instead of sending them to school. As a response, the PAN plan can raise funds to provide free school lunches to children in the poorest provinces. With support from the community, local volunteers can lead this initiative, using home-grown ingredients to prepare nutritious meals. The schools will be able to receive a steady supply of fresh fruits and vegetables from local farmers.
Topic 3: The Controversial Process of Selecting UNESCO World Heritage Sites
Unesco world heritage sites, are parts of history that Unesco believes must be cherished to preserve the cultures of our world. However, many people begin to question whether the naming of Unesco world heritage sites has become a politicization process, and used for gain of the country, or gain for preserving a piece of history. It has long been known that the list has been used for many purposes, that go much further than just the protection of the sites. The committee, which is seen to most as a success, can be highly driven by domestic and gain by a country, because the inclusion on the list has the possibility of the site to provoke millions of tourists from around the world to come and witness what the site has to offer, often providing lots of wealth in tourism. Others include the representation during the selection process, as powerful individuals in committee may follow through with their country agenda.
The Republic of Senegal believes that many issues across the spectrum must be focused on. For starters, Unesco must find a way to assist lesser developed states in the selection process, since countries with more representation in the world usually have more resources, such as documents to more easily back up their claims to be a heritage site. Unesco must provide all areas that have been affected by conflict or financial issues a financial aid designated to paying for the long processes of naming sites, for poorer nations such as Senegal. Without a plan of this kind in place, sites in many African countries are underlooked and cannot be designated heritage sites.
14.02.2019