Ei-iE

The 10th Education International (EI) World Congress, meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 29 July 29 to 2 August 2024:

Considering:

1. The different and successive attacks on democratic regimes in Latin America, particularly starting from when leftwing political forces took power in different countries on the South American continent and developed successful social inclusion policies with huge global repercussions;
2. The global strategy of “hybrid warfare” to destabilise western democracies and political regimes in North Africa and the Middle East, particularly since the “Arab Spring”, through the active involvement of governments or intelligence agencies linked to the state structures of global powers;
3. The coups on the political, legal and media front in Latin America (Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador) and the subsequent political and economic destabilisation in the region due to a clear response from the capital sector and the United Sates of America to economic and social policies that have given hope to the world;
4. The criminal United States’ blockade against Cuba has been maintained, intensified after the election of Donald Trump and continued by current president Joe Biden as a strategy to supress the growth of a political, economic and social model that opposes capitalism;
5. The capture of democratic regimes and Latin American markets by returning to neoliberal policies in the region, (following the 2008 crisis) based on the expropriation of wealth (oil, gas, minerals, state-owned enterprises), the suppression of social and workers’ rights, the privatisation of fundamental public rights (education, health and welfare), the worsening of environmental sustainability and the extensive deregulation and funding of economies;
6. The destructive expansion of capital in Latin America and other parts of the world, through the weakening of democratic regimes and the symbiotic union between the leaders of capital and nationalist and antidemocratic policies, that in turn triggered a movement expanding the far-right in a context of crises caused by neoliberalism, which subsequently discredited in society party politics and democracy itself;
7. That the political, economic and social destabilisation, caused by hybrid and military interventions, directly or indirectly sponsored by the centre of global capitalism, has caused and continues to cause intense humanitarian crises, particularly in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, with increasing migration and xenophobia on the European continent, in the US and in other regions;
8. The need to combat the growth of the far-right in the Americas and the world, saving democratic debate and socially-inclusive development policies.

The 10th Education International (EI) World Congress, recommends:

9. Expanding the social struggle in support of democracies and the full application of human rights, in line with international conventions in Latin America and the world, to include guidelines on inclusion and social wellbeing, job creation and wages, peace between peoples and regulating productive and financial markets;
10. Investing in political and union training of the working class, particularly for education workers, so as to strengthen mechanisms of participatory democracy and have society participating more actively in building a possible new world;
11. Enhancing people’s awareness about the effects of neoliberal and far-right policies on all sectors of society, especially through the capture of public goods, social exclusion and the entrenchment of reactionary and individualistic policies that go against a fair society and sustainable planet;
12. Increasing the participation of education workers in electoral processes for the executive and legislative branches, taking their positions straight to public and institutional debate;
13. Countering positions in favour of privatisation and the customs imposed by neoliberalism and the far-right on the curriculum and how schools are organised. These undermine critical thinking and the ability of education systems to resist denialism and ethno-racial, religious, gender-based prejudices and those based on sexual orientation, and to support environmental protection;
14. Calling on governments, parliaments and electoral systems in democratic countries, particularly through the United Nations (UN) to defend democracy through media campaigns, reshaping education and social participation in different spaces for collective decision-making (school councils, referenda, parliamentary commissions for projects and social debates, public assemblies to discuss discrimination in cities and neighbourhoods, etc.);
15. EI takes step to celebrate the UN International Day of Democracy, on September 15 with the aim of actively contributing to the process of collectively shaping societies.