Ei-iE

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

1. Today, 400 million children across the globe are living in or fleeing conflict zones, that is about 1 in every 5 of the world’s children, more than 315,000 grave child rights violations in areas of conflict between 2005 and 2022, and at least 120,000 children killed or maimed by wars around the world across continents since 2005, an average of almost 20 a day;
2. Global military expenditure rose for the eighth consecutive year in 2022 to reach an estimated $2240 billion, the highest level ever recorded by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Governments around the world spent an average of 6.2 per cent of their budgets on the military, or $282 per person;
3. Article 38 of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that ‘States Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for rules of international humanitarian law applicable to them in armed conflicts which are relevant to the child’;
4. Wars and conflicts are the greatest violations of human rights. The mission/core assignment of education should be to study the world based on the question: How can we live together in a common world? Each curriculum must take shape from that core assignment, in order to be able to contribute to a peaceful society.

The 10th World Congress, therefore,

5. Recalls the 2009 Education International declaration ‘Schools Shall Be Safe Sanctuaries’, which condemns violent attacks on schools and educational institutions and calls for the protection of teachers, pupils, scientists, students and other education workers;
6. Encourages all member organisations to support the Safe Schools Declaration and campaign for governments to sign and fully implement the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict, working in partnership with other member organisations and civil society whenever possible;
7. Underlines the demands of the resolution on ‘Education, Peace and Justice in Conflict Areas’ from the EI World Congress in Ottawa 2015 to promote conflict resolution and education for peace and justice;
8. Reaffirms the resolution on the ‘Promotion and Protection of Standards and Values in the World’ from the EI World Congress in Ottawa, 2015. It emphasizes that quality education based on values can make invaluable contributions and that the bulk of the work to build tolerance and peace will take place in the classroom;
9. Reaffirms the resolution on ‘Resolution on: Peace Education - No Arms Expenditure - Books Not Bombs’ from the EI World Congress in Bangkok, 2019 which links to the present ‘Go Public! Fund Education’ campaign;
10. Underlines the importance of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 16 to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development;
11. Welcomes the United Nations Treaty of 2017 to ban the development, production, testing, acquisition, stockpiling, transport, stationing and use of nuclear weapons and calls on all states to accede to it;
12. Opposes the recruitment of young people for armed forces by National Defence or Army personnel within the school premises. Teachers and other education personnel must be given the formal authority to refuse the recruiters access to the school grounds. They must be able to refuse to apply the content and provisions of school curricula that promote the army and conflict resolution through war;
13. Opposes all publicly funded research directed at further developing weapons of all kinds, and, calls instead, for the expansion of peace and conflict resolution research and related teaching;
14. Opposes unconstrained military spending and the expansion of the military industrial complex;
15. Underlines that building tolerance and peace is an assignment for the entire society. Governments must do everything that lies in their power to support schools in this so that ways can be found to realise the important role schools have to play.