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Education International (EI) welcomes the liberation and safe return to France of Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, two teachers and long-standing trade union activists, who were arrested while on a private trip to Iran and arbitrarily detained for nearly four years. Cécile and Jacques arrived back in Paris on 8 April 2026.

Cécile Kohler is a secondary school literature teacher and international affairs officer for the French union Force Ouvrière (FNEC FP-FO). Before her detention, she worked closely with EI and attended consecutive International Labour Organization (ILO) conferences as part of the EI delegation. Jacques Paris is a retired mathematics teacher and former General Secretary of an FNEC FP-FO affiliate. In that quality, he attended the 2019 EI World Congress in Bangkok, Thailand.

The two unionists had been imprisoned since 7 May 2022 on unfounded charges of espionage. During their detention, they were held in severe conditions, including long periods of solitary confinement in Tehran’s Evin prison, which international organisations have identified as amounting to torture and a serious violation of international law.

Following their release from prison in November 2025, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris remained under house arrest at the French embassy in Tehran until their departure from Iran earlier this week. After arriving in Paris on 8 April, they met with President Emmanuel Macron and publicly testified to the inhuman and arbitrary nature of their detention, while affirming their determination to speak out about what they endured.

Cécile Kohler and her sister Noémie

Education International salutes the perseverance of their families, colleagues and support committees, as well as the sustained international solidarity shown within the education trade union movement. Throughout their imprisonment, trade unions, civil society organisations and education unions across Europe and beyond mobilised to demand their release. While respecting a deliberately low profile in line with the guidance of French officials, EI worked closely with Force Ouvrière and remained in regular contact with their families. Together with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), EI also documented the case before the ILO’s Committee on Freedom of Association.

The case of Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris symbolises the risks faced by teachers and education workers worldwide when fundamental rights, academic freedom and trade union freedoms are not respected. Their arbitrary detention demonstrates once again how educators can be targeted simply for who they are and the values they represent.

For many years, the Iranian regime has targeted teachers and their representative organisations for their legitimate and peaceful activities in defence of decent working conditions, quality public education, and fundamental trade union rights. Teacher unionists and education workers continue to face systematic harassment, arbitrary arrest, and detention simply for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association.

The violent repression of the January uprising inside Iran was met with severe government repression with the killing of thousands of people, including teachers and students. Education International continues to stand in solidarity with its members in Iran, and calls for the respect of their human and trade union rights.

Education International General Secretary David Edwards expressed his delight at the news of the two French teachers’ release: “At a moment of accelerating bad news globally, hearing that our teacher union colleagues Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris are back in France after nearly four years in captivity in Iran stands out as monumentally fantastic news. Education International never stopped calling for their release nor lost hope they would return one day. Today we continue to express our solidarity with them as the stalwart teacher unionists they are who never stopped speaking out for the oppressed and were always working to build a better world. We express our great relief to them and their families that they are home and look forward to seeing them as soon as they have recovered from the trauma they endured.”

“All the world's teachers join me in saying: ‘BIENVENUE!’”, he concluded.

Education International reiterates its unwavering commitment to defending teachers’ rights and to standing up for education workers facing repression, detention or persecution across the world. We call on all governments to respect international human rights standards and to ensure that no teacher or unionist is ever used as a political bargaining tool.