Manifesto for the right to education

In the City of Bogotá, on the 10th day of June 2025, the CLACSO Working Group on Educational Policies and the Right to Education, the Latin American Association for Educational Research (ALIE), the Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE), the Latin American Network of Studies on Teaching Work (REDESTRADO), the Federal Education Authority in Mexico City, the National Pedagogical University of Colombia, the National Pedagogical University of Mexico, the Observatory of the Right to Education of the University of the Republic of Uruguay, the Network for the Right to Education of Paraguay, the Colombian Federation of Educators (FECODE), the Colombian Association of University Professors (ASPU), the Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic (CTERA), and the National Federation of University Teachers of Argentina (CONADU), present at the X Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Social Sciences organized by CLACSO, affirm our commitment to the human and social right to education, and to the strengthening of the Public education in all its dimensions as a necessary condition for building the common good and egalitarian, democratic and sovereign societies.

Back in 2022, a group of organizations expressed our deep concern about the rearticulation of the right wing globally under a radicalized neoliberalism and conservatism that supported anti-rights discourses and proposals, and jeopardized public education systems in the region, within the framework of unbridled capitalism. 

Since then, this concern has only grown in the face of the expansion of far-right movements that are advancing in the development of proposals and actions that seek to dismantle public education and ideologically establish a discourse that denies the very existence of the right to education. 

We observe how, in the most unequal region on the planet, with the highest levels of privatization of education, measures are being implemented that seek to deepen the commodification of education and expand business opportunities for educational services. These measures only exacerbate inequalities, segment our societies, and shatter any prospect of social justice. Private groups with vested interests are gaining power in shaping public policy, to the detriment of the interests of the vast majority. 

A particularly sensitive area for the deployment of the aforementioned processes is the digitization of education and its implications for the capture of sensitive data, control of students, teachers and other professionals, privatization of education and epistemological homogenization.

The regression in terms of rights is sustained through symbolic and material actions of silencing, repression and persecution against various groups and activists committed to critical thinking, transformation and emancipation: trade union, teachers', students', feminist, indigenous, migrant, environmental organizations and movements, among others. 

Migrant and refugee populations displaced by social, economic, and political situations are among those who suffer these blows most severely.

In our 2022 manifesto, we expressed our rejection of a series of dynamics, regarding which, three years later, we observe not only their persistence but their worsening, such as:

• The strategies of ideological control, which are expressed in initiatives to attack comprehensive sex education and the political nature of education.
• The precariousness and intensification of teaching work, as well as the general deterioration of working conditions for most Latin American teachers.
• The individualization of pedagogical processes and the expansion of so-called "positive pedagogies" and the management of emotions, which pose individual responses to problems that are social and systemic.
• The standardization of curricula around certain fields of knowledge and the growing exclusion of social sciences, humanities content and the arts, as well as the denial of the importance of these fields of knowledge and culture for the education of all people.
• The standardization of education, which is manifested both in the content under the appeal to global citizenship and entrepreneurship, and in the growing importance of national or international scale assessments in public policies.
• The lack of awareness of the strategic role of arts and cultures in the formation of new generations and in the pluricultural integration of Latin American and Caribbean peoples.
• Insufficient funding for the sector and the decrease in public resources, as well as the ways in which they are allocated, which increasingly involve their reorientation towards private or business sectors.
• Treating education not as a right but as a service, and in some cases as an "essential service", thereby restricting the right of workers to strike.

We reaffirm that education is the sphere for building common life and is a fundamental human and social right that must be guaranteed by the State. This was established almost 80 years ago in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the international framework that regulates this right. Therefore, and in light of the concerns listed, the undersigned organizations and institutions reaffirm our commitment to deepening actions that will allow us to reposition the perspective of the right to education and to unite efforts, wills, and struggles for a public, equitable, intercultural, feminist, anti-racist, and Latin American education.

Furthermore, within the framework of the new administration to begin on July 1, 2025, we ask CLACSO to give priority attention to the defense of public education and the promotion of the right to education in all our countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. 

City of Bogotá
June 10th, 2025
CLACSO Working Group Educational policies and the right to education
Latin American Association for Educational Research (ALIE)
Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE)
Latin American Network of Studies on Teaching Work (REDESTRADO)
Federal Education Authority in Mexico City
National Pedagogical University of Colombia
National Pedagogical University of Mexico
Observatory of the Right to Education of the University of the Republic of Uruguay
Network for the Right to Education of Paraguay
Colombian Federation of Educators (FECODE)
Colombian Association of University Professors (ASPU)
Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic (CTERA)
National Federation of University Teachers of Argentina (CONADU)

This statement expresses the position of the aforementioned spaces and not necessarily that of the centers and institutions that make up the CLACSO international network, its Steering Committee or its Executive Secretariat.