The 10th Education International (EI) World Congress, meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, from 29 July to 2 August 2024:
The resolutions of the 7th World Congress of EI in Ottawa, in July 2015, and the 8th World Congress in Bangkok, in July 2019, upheld and reiterated EI’s commitment to defend academic and research freedoms;
The UNESCO 2024 Programme for the promotion of Scientific Freedom and Safety of Scientists underline that our world needs science more than ever. Attacks that silence the critical voices of researchers, undermine the ability to produce relevant knowledge. Scientific inquiry can only flourish in an open and safe science ecosystem;
Higher education and research and their staff, teacher researchers and researchers, are currently facing pressures of all kinds, including outright attacks of varying severity, in all countries around the world. These acts are often targeted at the humanities and social sciences, where societal issues are directly at stake, but also environmental sciences, at a time when understanding global change has become an issue that reaches far beyond the scientific community;
In some non-democratic countries, these attacks take the form of arrests, imprisonment and even killings;
In democratic countries, the attacks are less brutal. They take the form, for example, of public interventions by certain political leaders, activist organisations and/or individuals launching witch-hunts on the subject of teaching and university debates, going as far as injunctions and threats to remove certain subjects from teaching or research. These attacks are sustained enough to lead to dismissals, in extreme cases;
The involvement of scientists in society, as experts called upon to address matters of concern to all citizens, is also called into question when it risks upsetting industrial and economic interests. The reactions can take the form of harassment and threats, in some cases affecting the private lives of the scientists concerned;
Universities, as well as research institutions and specialised agencies, are subjected to pressures arising from the implementation of policies that seek to subordinate higher education and research to economic or ideological imperatives, often resulting in drastic cuts to their financial and human resources;
The 10th Congress of EI recognises that the defence of the rights of higher education personnel requires a joint effort of organisations from all educational levels. Thus, calls on EI and its member organisations to campaign in defence of scientific personnel and their institutions and against policies that call into question academic and research freedoms and prevent scientists from expressing themselves, both within their institutions and society at large.