Why should we guarantee education for all?
The right to education is a fundamental human right recognized by numerous international declarations and conventions to which most Latin American countries have subscribed or adhered. It plays an essential role in building human capital, breaking the cycle of poverty, promoting economic productivity, and eliminating social disparities and inequalities.
This right is essential in Latin American countries to enable citizens to obtain the skills they need to enter the job market and respond to growing expectations of specialization.
The Latin America Context
The countries of Latin America are experiencing major socio-political challenges and instability, undermining the public policies that guarantee quality education. It is in this region that the most marked inequalities have been identified, and where education is a right that varies according to social class, gender, and whether a person lives in the countryside or in the city. This right is also less accessible to vulnerable groups such as people with disabilities, ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples and people of different genders. Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis highlighted the weaknesses of digital education in terms of skills development, new teaching methods and access to IT tools for low-income institutions and students. Thus, inclusion and access are the main criteria for designing public policies that take sustainability into account, with a view to achieving education for all.
In the region, 2.3 million children do not attend primary school, and the situation is more critical at secondary level, where 2.5 million children and teenagers do not attend lower secondary school and 7.2 million do not attend upper secondary school.
It is therefore essential that public services, with the help of CSOs, focus on implementing reforms that will enable children and adolescents living in isolated communities, from indigenous populations, exposed to violence and facing sexual and ethnic discrimination, to see their chances of accessing education improve.
The priorities of RIDHE
- Improve access to quality education and equity in fragile and humanitarian contexts.
- Develop initiatives to reduce the exclusion of vulnerable groups from the education system.
- Improve language learning and technical skills development.
- Facilitate access to scholarships for students in precarious situations or victims of human rights violations.
- Design and implement a support platform for orientation and psycho-social assistance.
- Reduce the digital divide through digital literacy and access to new digital technologies.
