ICAE's CAMPAIGN FOR THE RIGHT TO LEARN THROUGHOUT LIFE

A Statement from the organizers: ICAE/GEO/CEAAL/REPEM

Education, regardless of form, place and age, has the potential of transforming reality. Unfortunately, at present, education is an element that reproduces inequality, reinforces discrimination and divides communities, encouraging violence and dividing people. Education is a basic human right and the States are responsible for guaranteeing this right.

Basic education should not be simply understood as the access of children between 5 and 15 to educational opportunities but also of adult men and women. In a globalized world where deep and quick changes take place, men and women need constant lifelong learning.

Literacy is necessary for accessing new technologies, respecting differences, for cultural insertion and to fully exercise citizenship. Poverty growth, migrations, armed conflicts, the increase of exclusion and inequality that mostly affect women, demand new skills to become competent and to be able to create a world with more social justice, inclusion and gender equity.

Is it possible to imagine Lula Da Silva's presidency without his struggle for lifelong learning?

Another world is possible, another education is possible...education with gender justice... ...

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A Statement from Paul Belanger, ICAE's president

.."100,000 people are in Porto Alegre from all regions of the world in order to think about a new world and a new formula to rebuild it...to dream that another global world is possible, without wars and without domination...to imagine ways in which all women and men would be able to exercise their right to learn and participate in the construction of alternatives.

We are the voices of those men and women claiming to replace war with education, bombs with health, and military resources with social funds. For them the right to learn throughout life is the key to the deconstruction of the dominant propaganda."