Walid al-Musalh - Baghdad

In a country that was the first to know the writing thousands of years ago by the Sumerians, and the systems of justice and human rights, and left a legacy of knowledge and culture can not be abandoned, but it is today in a different face, the illiteracy is exacerbated and increase to a frightening rate.

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), it is illiterate who can not read or write a simple sentence about his daily life.

In the early 1980s, Iraq had an advanced education system that surpassed its peers in the countries of the region with the UNESCO certificate. However, the same organization has re-classified it among the countries with a significant increase in illiteracy rates, which exceeds 47% (ages 6-55).

In an attempt to limit the phenomenon, the government in 2011 issued a law to eradicate illiteracy No. 23, and consequently set up a literacy authority affiliated to the Ministry of Education, including representatives of nine ministries in addition to the Awqaf and the Teachers Union and civil society.

The Commission is concerned with setting the general objectives of literacy and the implementation budget, and approving curricula, books, study dates and teachers' selection criteria.

Like all other laws enacted after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and then in the corridors of oblivion, there is no need to complete education and criminalize those who do not comply, to keep that law on paper while illiteracy creeps and expands in an environment that does not get too confused by the uneducated.

UNICEF to equip displaced students

Statistics
Literacy centers that are home to those who have not had life The opportunities for learning throughout the country amounted to 5699 centers for the year 2012-2013, but they have declined and declined to fall to 842 in 2017-2018 according to the statistics of the executive body for literacy.

Director of the Dhi Qar Women's Literacy Center in the capital Baghdad, Wafaa Marei, 52, attributed the weakness of enrollment in literacy centers and the drop of a large percentage of those who were to stop the disbursement of incentives for students and teachers (40 thousand Iraqi dinars per month), which was in place before 2014, "The weakness of the physical situation of the studies and the lack of consent of the husband or engage in work to earn a living led to a low rate of turnout study."

Director of the Executive Office for Literacy (Al-Jazeera)

Illiteracy
The vast majority of illiteracy is concentrated in remote rural areas and the margins of cities and governorates liberated from the grip of state regulation, particularly for the age of forty-nine years, where males are larger than females, whose families are only few in primary school.

However, there are quite a number of girls in cities and urban areas who have the opposition of parents or husbands to complete education.

Even those who have passed primary education, many of them are unable to read and write, making them victims of repeated repetition and eventually leaving school.

Training Officer, Directorate of Education of Karkh II (Al Jazeera)

Reasons for their aggravation
Director General of the Executive Authority for Literacy Mohamed Jawad Al-Moussawi (58 years) revealed the various reasons behind the growing phenomenon of illiteracy and the intensification of the muscles, and explained to the island Net that wars and the depletion of infrastructure and the low economic situation of many families cast a shadow on the deterioration of education and illiteracy and ignorance in the media the society.

There are other factors that the educational training expert Shaker Abdel-Karim (65 years) is concerned with corruption in state institutions, and the fragility of the supervisory and educational role, which left armies of the illiterate to turn a blind eye to them only to mention official statistics and newspaper headlines.

Abdul Karim added to Al-Jazeera Net to the previous obstacles to quotas and parties within the institutions of education and the acute shortage in schools and rural and urban parties and weak supervision and the implementation of compulsory education.

He spoke of the lack of absorption of graduates in government jobs, along with the waves of migration and displacement, "reflecting the reality of painful education and doubled the numbers of those who play it."

"Unfortunately, we do not have up-to-date information on literacy in Iraq and we do not have any grants from donor countries to support this sector," said Diaa Subhi, head of the media department at the UNESCO-Iraq office.

According to the Constitution of UNESCO, "Since wars are born in the minds of men, in their minds the defenses of peace must be built." In order to develop a non-violent peaceful environment, every child must be able to access quality education in Iraq.

This is achieved through the fight against illiteracy and the push towards highly educated young people, which will later build a competitive and skilled workforce and help address and confront the challenges to human security.