Education has become a global challenge. For instance, Europe, the United States, Japan and even the emerging nations of Asia have all come together in support of Education For All. Education is the big issue of today, says Laya Sawadogo, Burkina Faso’s Minister of Secondary and Higher Education and Scientific Research in an interview published on the Unesco website.
"I’d like to cite you some figures to give you an idea of the situation in Burkina Faso: 42 per cent of our children are in primary school, only 12 per cent are enrolled in secondary school and 1.3 per cent go on to higher education. And we have an illiteracy rate of 76 per cent. We need to improve all these indicators, but that’s not an easy thing to do given our present situation."

Health workers in Burkina Faso have called for a more open discussion of issues related to sexuality and abortion. This follows the release of a report by the Demographic Research and Study Unit, which found that up to 8,000 illegal abortions take place each year in the country's capital, Ouagadougou. "We need to go out into the communities and talk about abortions to increase awareness," says Jean Lankoande, a gynaecologist at the Yalgado Ouedraogo Hospital in Ouagadougou. "Each time there's an induced abortion, it's a family planning failure," he adds.

The government of Burkina Faso has launched a nationwide survey to find out just how successful its 12-year campaign against female circumcision has been and the first results are encouraging. In 1992, when the campaign against female genital mutilation (FMG) was launched, two thirds of all women in this poor landlocked country suffered the ritual cutting out of their clitoris around the age of puberty. First results from the latest national survey show that in some areas of Burkina Faso the proportion of girls subjected to FMG has fallen to just one or two percent.