Literacy, according to the United Nations, is a human right, a tool of personal empowerment and a means for cultural development. In 2003, the UN launched the United Nations Literacy Decade (2003-2012), a 10-year challenge to the world to improve literacy rates worldwide. Three years into the UN Literacy Decade, the world has realized significant strides in addressing literacy and access to education. Today there are nearly 4 billion literate people worldwide.

However, according to the most recent data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), there are still an estimated 781 million illiterate adults in the world, about 64 percent of whom are women. And in some regions of the world, nearly half of all women are reported to be illiterate.

• Nearly two-thirds of the world's illiterate adults live in only nine countries, and 45 percent of the world's illiterate adults live in India and China (34 percent and 11 percent respectively).
• Globally, 82 percent of the world's population is reported as literate: 87 percent of men and 77 percent of all women.
• Extremely low literacy rates are concentrated in three regions, South and West Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab States, where only about six in 10 adults are considered literate: around two-thirds of men and only half of women.
• In contrast, Latin America and the Caribbean and East Asia and the Pacific have literacy rates around 90 percent, for both men and women. Yet these regions combined account for 22 percent of the world's illiterate population.

The National Institute for Literacy has begun working with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in preparing a paper to describe high quality adult literacy programs around the world.

The following pages highlight some of the work going on around the world to address and combat worldwide literacy problems. We will continue to build on the information on these pages as they develop into a central site for worldwide literacy resources.

Through the International Perspectives web page we hope to help American adult literacy and English language teachers and their students find easy access to information about:

• adult literacy education in other countries and cultures, including both developing and industrialized countries, and including curriculum and outcomes standards for adult education in other countries
• international comparative studies of adult literacy and PreK-12 education, and
• international efforts to raise literacy levels (e.g.UNESCO, International Reading Association, and the Venezuelan and Argentinian literacy campaigns)

American adult literacy education teachers and other practitioners have much to learn and to offer their colleagues in other countries. Some of the challenges are the same; and some of the solutions to these challenges may be found in the practice of colleagues from other countries. We are launching this page in celebration of International Literacy Day, 2006, and plan, in the coming months and years to add other research and practice links. We would like to hear your thoughts, too, of resources which we should consider, or comments on the organization of this page. Please e-mail your comments to: info@nifl.gov