Baku, Azerbaijan, April 28
Trend:
Education is one of the most prioritized issues for Azerbaijan, the country's president, Ilham Aliyev said at the opening of the 3rd Baku Global Shared Societies Forum in Azerbaijani capital on April 28.
"Education is knowledge, future. For us it is modernization," said the president. "Our government every year spends at least 40 million euros to train our leading young people abroad in the world's universities."
Ilham Aliyev also said that there is almost 100 percent literacy in Azerbaijan.
"Education is also a protection from radicalization, and this is also important for the country that is situated in this region," said the president, adding that protection against radicalization is stability and justice in the society, its economic development, eradication of poverty and unemployment.
"Poverty, unemployment, social and political injustice - they feed the radicals," said president Aliyev. "They're the tools the radicals use to brainwash the young people and to recruit them for their purposes. Thus for us education means modernization, development, as well as protection from radicalism."
"This is how we want to see Azerbaijan in the future and we have complete consensus in our society with respect to how Azerbaijan should develop," he said.