While societies enter into the information and knowledge society, and modern technologies develop and spread at rapid speed, 860 million adults are illiterate, over 100 million children have no access to school, and countless children, youth and adults who attend school or other education programmes fall short of the required level to be considered literate in today’s complex world. This is the reason why the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed the United Nations Literacy Decade for the period 2003-2012, launched this month.