Resolution on issues in the Latin American Region
The 7th Education International (EI) World Congress meeting in Ottawa, Canada, from 21nd to 26th July 2015:
1. Reasserting EI’s commitment to the defence and protection of the human and trade union rights of education workers;
2. Recognising that to strengthen peace and democracy we must also strengthen the right to public education, protect freedom of association and expand social rights;
3. Recognising, similarly, that trade union organisations are called on to maintain resistance and defend human rights, as well as the institution of and respect for democratic, people’s governments freely elected through the ballot box;
4. Drawing attention, with deep concern, to the situation in Honduras, where the 2009 coup d’état opened the way to a systematic violation of the human, labour and trade union rights established in the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Conventions 87 and 98. Since then there has been a dismantling of public education, which in turn seriously undermines the social right to education of the children and youth of Honduras;
5. Noting, similarly, that the situation has not improved, but rather has grown worse, to the detriment of teachers’ trade union organisations. They are now facing repeated persecution, orchestrated by the current government through the Ministry of Education, which is dismissing teachers’ union leaders, removing union leave, restricting the right to strike and dismissing teachers in an unprecedented manner. Furthermore, it has co-opted the management of the teachers’ social security institutions, together with their financial resources. At the same time, impunity still surrounds the assassination of the teacher Ilse Ilvania Valesques Rodríguez following the repression by police of her right to demonstrate;
Resolves that EI:
6. Continue to denounce before all the international institutions the violations of human and trade union rights by the Government of Honduras. At the same time, to call on all EI affiliated organisations around the world to denounce in their countries the violation of these rights in Honduras in order to guarantee the protection of trade union rights and freedoms in every country;
7. Develop a strategy for the protection of human and trade union rights, including global solidarity actions between countries, such as organising campaigns and protests to express this solidarity at the global and regional level.
