Gender parity in education remains a distant prospect in 54 countries, including 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa as well as India and Pakistan, despite worldwide focus on Education for All, specially on girls’ education. Girls continue to face sharp discrimination in access to schooling in a majority of developing countries, even though slow but significant progress was achieved in the 1990’s, says the Global Education for All monitoring report for 2003/4, released in the Indian capital today. However, it would unfair to say that the goal to achieve gender parity in education is unachievable. If the two major challenges - of reducing costs facing households to send girls to schools and discouraging employment of children as labour, either at homes or outside are addressed, the goal can still be achieved, Mr. C. Colclough, Director of the Report, told reporters. The global report titled ‘EFA Global Monitoring Report 2003/4, Gender and Education for All, The Leap to Equality’ was released in New Delhi, ahead of the High Level meeting here on EFA from November 10-12. Inequality in education is a major infringement of rights of women and girls’ even widely ratified international treaties contain provisions on free primary education and gender. What is required then, is political commitment to reinforce this legal commitment, Colclough said. Gender equality in education is one of the six goals of the Education for All programme endorsed by the 164 countries at the World Education Forum, in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2000. They had set the target of 2005 to achieve gender parity or equal enrolment of boys and girls in primary and secondary education. According to the report, nearly 57 per cent of the estimated 104-million primary-age children out of school worldwide are girls, which suggests that discrimination remains a pressing problem. Of the 128 countries for which the data for the reference year 2000 is available, 52 have already achieved gender parity or will have done so by 2005 at primary and secondary level, a UNESCO press release said. Amongst the poorest performers in terms of girls’ access to primary school, according to the Report, are Chad, Yemen, Guinea-Bissau, Benin, Niger, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Liberia, and Pakistan. Girls’ enrolment in these countries is only three quarters that of boys. India, with a GPI of 0.83 at primary level, is only slightly ahead. Citing the major challenges in achieving gender parity, Colclough said need to supplement family income is one of the main reasons why children do not attend classes, says the report. According to the most recent estimates “18 percent of children aged 5-14 are economically active, amounting to some 211 million children, about half of whom are girls. In addition, many more millions of children are involved in domestic labour, sometimes at great cost to their educational participation or success. “A much larger proportion of these children are girls than boys,” said Colclough. Cost is another major obstacle: in spite of the human rights instruments which commit states to free and compulsory education at primary level, school fees continue to be levied in at least 101 countries, in the form of tuition fees, the cost of books, compulsory school uniforms, and community contributions. There are also numerous other barriers to girls’ education including early marriage, HIV/AIDS, conflict, and violence in schools. In Southern Africa and the Caribbean, girls between 15 and 19 are infected by HIV/AIDS at rates four to seven times higher than boys, “a disparity linked to widespread exploitation, sexual abuse and discriminatory practices, according to the report.