Lee este comunicado en español

In the run-up to the National Referendum in Chile that will take place on 25 October 2020, offering a chance to all to express whether they wish to have a new Constitution, GI-ESCR, the Right to Education Initiative and SUMMA join forces to highlight the importance of education in the country's constitutional debate.

“Constituyamos otra educación” ("Let's build another education") is a campaign led by the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR), SUMMA (the Laboratory for Research and Innovation in Education for Latin America and the Caribbean), and the Right to Education Initiative.

It aims to promote the debate on how best to guarantee the right to education in Chile’s constitution, based on the analysis of Chile’s own constitutional history as well as of the constitutional experience of other countries and international human rights standards.

Building on evidence from other experiences throughout the world, the initiative aims to show that transforming and improving education in Chile is possible.

 " We have been working for years on the promotion and development of education in Chile and Latin America and the Caribbean. For this reason, we believe that this campaign, carried out together with organisations with which we share a solid and consistent path and agenda, aims to build the education we dream of in a participatory manner. We seek to continue building a country where everyone has the same rights, a country based on social justice. To achieve this goal, as many other countries do, we must be able to embody the principles of equality, freedom, fraternity and inclusion much more strongly in our political constitution,"

- Javier González, Executive Director of SUMMA.

"The right to education is indispensible to the enjoyment of other rights, personality development and dignity.  This right goes beyond ensuring that all children and young people can attend school; it also implies that the education they receive is inclusive, non-discriminatory, appropriate to their needs and adapted to their context.  The human rights framework has placed particular emphasis on the fact that a public service as important as education cannot be left to the mercy of the market. The political constitution of Chile plays a key role in ensuring the enjoyment of this right, which is not the case at present".

- Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR).

“The constituent process is a key opportunity for Chilean society to recognize and guarantee the right to education in all its dimensions, including its social dimension. With an education system marked by significant segregation and inequality, it is a landmark moment to anchor in the constitution the right to education that reflects the values of social justice: a right to free, good-quality public education for all. The Constitution of a country defines the social project of a people for many years. It is a unique moment to define educational objectives that are based on respect for human rights and that respond to today's challenges at both the individual and collective levels.”

Delphine Dorsi, Executive Director of the Right to Education Initiative.

For more information on this campaign, check out our joint campaign’s page on SUMMA’s website.

CHECK OUT!

How to inform and support this historical process? With this question, this short publication succinctly summarises the main findings and conclusions of the study on outstanding constitutional experiences in education, prepared by the same authors, which will be available from December 2020 in SUMMA and the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Why is it important to guarantee the right to education? What does our constitution say about the right to education? ...
Let's Create Another Education...A Better Society is Possible - 10 constitutional knots in education and leading international experiences to inspire national debate, provides a concise and useful overview of the right to education, particularly in the context of the current constitutional debate in Chile.