As the Sustainable Development Goals second anniversary comes to date, the Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education has launched a campaign to demand full financing of Sustainable Development Goal 4. On its behalf, the International Federation of Fe y Alegría has joined and supports the campaign since the funding of education budgets is a crucial need in order to fulfill the State’s obligations towards the 2030 Agenda.
As Friends of Fe y Alegría in the US, we stand for this mobilization to underscore the importance of tax justice for guaranteeing the human right to education. The statement of support for this campaign summarizes the four main demands of the campaign, including investment in education in national and ODA budgets and fiscal justice.
The Education Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) promote the changes needed to ensure the right to inclusive, equitable and quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all people, as set out in international commitments.
The main demands of the campaign highlight four numbers to support the commitment to education: the international community committed itself in 2015 to increasing the allocation of resources to make this right a reality. Low and middle income countries must allocate at least 6% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 20% of their total education budget, while donor countries must allocate 0.7% of GDP to Official Development Assistance.
The campaign highlights two matters: on the one hand, the serious setbacks in the allocation of financial resources for education, in violation of rights and jeopardizing the achievement of educational goals and on the other hand, the privatizing tendencies of and in education, which impose the logic of the market in public education and threaten the free provision of education.
In order to confront these two tendencies, the main call of the campaign leans on tax justice, as it allows the necessary conditions to be set for the achievement of the human right to education: without the establishment of a fair and equitable tax system and effective mechanisms to counter fiscal avoidance and evasion, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean will hardly have sufficient public resources to overcome inequalities and guarantee human rights.
In this regard, it must be recognized that the struggle for free, quality public education begins by putting an end to harmful tax incentives and tax avoidance practices of national and transnational corporations, by increasing the transparency of governments and large corporations, and by establishing a new international tax architecture.
You can follow the campaign messages or join social networks with the hashtag #FinancienloJusto or go to www.semanalatinoamericana.campanaderechoeducacion.org
