The XII Regional Assembly of the Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE), began in October, with the realization of four virtual events and culminated with the presential meeting in Tegucigalpa, on November 7 to 11, 2022, hosted by the Dakar Forum Honduras, under the theme “For the right to public education, care, transformation and social justice”.
The XII CLADE Assembly is taking place two and a half years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which intensified the already existing challenges to the human right to education, such as exclusion, the digital gap, and the reduction of public budgets for education systems. exclusion, the digital divide, and the reduction of public budgets for public education systems, among others.
In addition to this, there has been a setback in democracy, an increase in authoritarianism and fundamentalism, assassinations and disappearances of social leaders, criminalization of social protest, wars and destruction of the environment, which also have an impact on the full exercise of the right to education.
In this context, from the XII Regional Assembly of CLADE,
WE REJECT
The authoritarian drift in the Latin American and Caribbean region, the political violence of the State, the persecution of human rights defenders, young people, demonstrators, civil society organizations and citizens in general.
WE AFFIRM:
1. That education is a universal, inalienable, unrenounceable Human Right, inherent to all persons, based on principles of equality and non-discrimination. It is an enabling right for the exercise of other human rights, and is therefore indispensable for the promotion of human dignity.
2. That, as such, it is necessary to have public education systems that generate equity and with the horizon of equality, and it is the responsibility of States to create the material and immaterial conditions for its exercise throughout life, from early childhood, preschool, elementary, primary, secondary, university, formal and informal, attending to the needs of each group, in harmony with their community.
3. That its dimensions, such as affordability, adaptability, accessibility and acceptability, contain movable and contextual variables and indicators that are a source to monitor and guarantee their compliance by the States.
4. That state public education must be free, secular, inclusive, diverse, critical, democratic, dialogic, intersectional, decolonial, transformative, political and citizen, emancipatory, updated, anti-discriminatory, guarantor of rights, whether in classroom, virtual or distance mode.
5. That all people should participate in educational communities, including historically excluded groups, such as girls and women, adolescents, adults and elderly people, impoverished population in urban and rural areas, different native peoples, afrodescendants, people with disabilities and neurodiversities, migrants, displaced and refugees, practitioners of minority religions, peasants, LGBTQIA+ population, among others.
6. States must progressively comply with the national and international commitments assumed in human rights treaties and agreements, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
WE DEMAND:
7. That all States in the Latin American and Caribbean region guarantee the full exercise of human rights and human dignity, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. We emphasize the situation of people who have been forced to be displaced within or outside their country, due to the different manifestations of violence against them.
8. That the States guarantee an adequate financing of public education, at all levels and modalities, considering the direct and indirect costs necessary to guarantee the human right to education, and ensuring that the financing is adequate to guarantee the right to education, and ensuring that funding is progressive and no less than 6% of GDP and 20% of national budgets, through concrete mechanisms such as progressive fiscal policies, in a horizon of fiscal justice still pending in our region, and ensuring the citizen participation in the formulation and execution of the national education budget.
9. That the States do not strengthen the privatization tendencies of and in education, by regulating the actions of private actors in education and establishing clear agreements and limits to the advance of commercialization and profit in education, as well as to the influence of the business and corporate sector in the definition of public educational policies in our countries.
10. That the teaching profession be recognized and valued in its rightful dimension and that the necessary spaces for training and capacity building be offered to carry out the public education that we demand and deserve, including decent salaries, respect for the right to organize and mobilize, and opportunities for greater professionalization.
11. Ensure that educational spaces are accessible, open to communities, free of gender-based and other forms of violence, with up-to-date physical and technological infrastructure, laboratories and open-air spaces, with learning environments that are accessible to all for art and sports. Likewise, safe transit to the educational center and means of transportation should be guaranteed.
12. That education should systematically incorporate theoretical and methodological approaches that make evident the educational needs of women, men, and other gender and sexual identities. The above, showing and problematizing the implications of other oppressions linked to age, race-ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, social class, nationality, among others.
13. That States, societies, organized groups, coalitions, networks, communication collectives, and individuals expand the spaces and moments for caring for people, including self-care, promoting the necessary transformation in order to achieve social justice. Caring for bodies implies preserving good mental health, human life and nature. It is community and personal care. It is a care of oneself and each other.
14. That access to the internet be declared a human right and that we move towards the digital transformation that demands: a) universal, free and permanent access to the internet; b) free provision of computers and mobile devices with broadband for students and teachers; c) sovereign cloud architecture depending on each country, with free passwords for students and teachers; d) proprietary taxonomy for the design of educational platforms oriented to critical thinking and creativity; e) no transfer of public resources destined for public education to transnational digital corporations.
Declaration approved by the XII Regional Assembly of the Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education – CLADE, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on November 11th, 2022.
