education diplomacy
The number of foreign students in Shanghai has increased by 13,000 to 60,200 in the past five years due to enhanced efforts in international exchanges. The city has set up sister city ties with 84 cities in 57 countries and regions, with “rich communication and cooperation in education, arts, sport, science and technology,” Shanghai Education Commission said.
Katharina Höne challenges Shaun Riordan's recent blog about the threat of "new diplomacies".
Pointing out that Goans residing in Portugal want facilities to study Konkani so that they and their children remain connected to their cultural roots, former external affairs minister Eduardo Faleiro said that the government of Goa may ensure that this is done.
Shaun Riordan on how creating more subsets of diplomacy can lead to confusion about what diplomacy actually is.
Women-focused aid groups welcomed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s unapologetically feminist foreign aid policy. [...] In five years, 95 per cent of Canada’s overseas development assistance will be devoted to programs that target gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. Fifty per cent of the development budget will go to sub-Saharan Africa and the amount of funding going to health and reproductive rights will double. [...] “The research shows beyond a doubt that investment in a girl’s education is the most effective investment we can make in international assistance.”
Campaigners who believe funding for schooling in the world’s poorest countries has hit crisis levels say next month’s G20 meeting will be a “make or break” moment for education. The share of aid funding spent on education has fallen for the past six years, from 10% in 2009 to 6.9% in 2015, according to new figures from the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco). Education now receives as little in aid funding as transport.
China has scored a major victory in soft diplomacy by quietly launching its own Nalanda University, while the original Nalanda campus in Bihar, planned almost a decade ago, is still stuck with 455-acre dead space. China’s education ministry had managed to keep the plan a secret till a few weeks ago when it formally announced the enrolment for the Nanhai Buddhist College in Hainan province in May.