Baku, Azerbaijan, June 23
Trend:
Azerbaijan will focus its attention on the need to nurturing a generation of educated and responsible youth, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said.
He made the remarks at the meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) as the chairman of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, according to the website of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.
The minister underscored that at the national level, the policy pursued by the Azerbaijani government is strongly youth-oriented with special focus on their education.
The share of public spending for education in GDP increases constantly and this is certainly being translated into the quality of education, according to Mammadyarov.
"At the same time, the number of Azerbaijani state-funded students studying in leading foreign, mainly European universities will reach 5,000 by 2015," he said.
"The first event that we hosted in Baku under the Azerbaijani chairmanship was exactly the one dealing with the education, namely meeting of coordinators for the Council of Europe Charter of Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights held in May".
"The promotion of well-educated youth was largely debated in another chairmanship event - the International Conference on 'Local democracy and Youth' organized jointly with the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe last week in Baku," Mammadyarov said.
He went on to add that during the discussions, special emphasis was placed on youth education, their active participation in decision making and implementation of those decisions at all levels of the governance.
The foreign minister underscored that next October, Baku will host two important events - the 4th regional ministerial meeting on the implementation of the European Higher Education Area and the UN Global Forum on Youth Policy.