UNITED NATIONS: Literacy of the masses helps in achieving a more sustainable future for countries, UN officials said on Sunday.

They stressed that knowledge could help combat poverty and improve people’s livelihood. “In our knowledge-based era, literacy is a foundation for a more just, inclusive and sustainable world,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his message for World Literacy Day, observed on Sept 8.

“Literacy enables people to gain access to information to improve their health and nutrition, widen their livelihood options, cope with environmental change and make informed choices,” he said.

There are more than 773 million young people and adults around the world who cannot read. Worldwide, at least 250 million children of primary school age cannot read, write or count. Two thirds of them are women.

Mr Ban underlined the importance of investing in education, noting this was an investment in human dignity, development and peace.

The latest data from the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) Institute for Statistics shows that most of the world’s illiterate adults live in South and West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Illiteracy also remains a persistent problem in developed countries, with Unesco data showing that one in five young people in Europe had poor literacy skills in 2009, and some 160 million adults in countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are functionally illiterate, which means that they do not have the skills needed to function in today’s environments such as the ability to fill out forms, follow instructions, read a map, or help with their children with homework.