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Proclamation of November 28, 2009
For an authentic universal education based on quality for the economic and social development in Haiti
A serious analysis of the policies of education of a great number of administrations which followed one another since the Independence of Haiti reveals to us that education did not always have the place that it deserves among the priorities of the latter. A consequence, among others, of this nonexistence of political benevolence to act with determination and conviction in a sector considered as fundamental for the human development of a country, is that we find ourselves today, after more than two centuries of independence, with approximately 500 000 Haitians who should be attending school but don’t even have access to it for lack of means. Of these 500 thousand young people, 57% are girls. This report refers only to the access to basic education. What then can be said about accessing the other under-sectors of education?
We point out here that the universal access to basic education constitutes one of the most fundamental duties of the State. The Haitian Constitution, in its articles 32 and following, establishes it clearly, just like the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights (1948) whose Haiti is signatory.
TheGroupe de Travail sur l'Éducation et la Formation (GTEF) in Haiti, which gathers personalities of allegiance and different backgrounds with them all deeply engaged in the field of education, worked for nearly two years towards a project of National Pact on Education and Training covering all the Haitian educational sectors: pre-school, fundamental, secondary, vocational training, literacy and university. In the development process of this pact, the GTEF led a broad consultation nationwide and, to a certain extent, in the Haitian Diaspora. The Haitian citizens and parents, who assume more than 80% of the national effort of education, expressed clearly their concerns and recriminations in regards to the access to education. Those concerns and recriminations are summarized as follows:
· Government-guaranteed access to a minimum of 6 years to fundamental education for all the children of the country (already registered in the Constitution of 1987);
· A minimum of one hot meal should be guaranteed by the Haitian government to all the pupils of Haiti, while prioritizing the children of the underprivileged;
· Government responsibility of an effective device guaranteeing the access to books and basic school materials for all the pupils of Haiti, while prioritizing the children of the underprivileged;
· Design and implementation of a new nationwide educational project supporting the formation of a new type of Haitian citizen better prepared to contribute to the development of the country.
Considering that no country on Earth could progress nor could develop without a preliminary systematic and supported investment in education (Cuba, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, etc), it’s apparent that education remains an obliged passage, a necessary condition - perhaps not sufficient - so that a country could reach modernity and authentic development.
- How to seriously tackle the challenge of demographic control without a better access to education ?
- How to exert a better control on the environment while preventing deforestation and the resulting risks of natural disasters without educating massively the population ?
- How to improve public health and to lengthen the population’s life expectancy without an education system that supports the prevention of diseases?
- How to create employment and wealth in the new economy based on knowledge without a system of education centered simultaneously on universality and quality?
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The situation of education, notably during the last two decades, already extremely alarming in itself, has worsened more and more by a series of contingencies that could lead the country in a vicious circle from which recovery will be intricate. Indeed, the very low level of schooling of the population, the remarkable preponderance of the private sector in the education system (more than 85%), the increasingly accelerated exodus of the well trained teachers towards careers considered more lenient, the unconvinced quality of the least approximate of the teaching doled out by a momentous number of teaching institutions, all that heavily puts at stake the education system and significantly affects the real level of tutoring of the youths of the country. In this context, the danger that preys on the country remains the incapacity to support an adequate process of generational renewal of qualified professionals and executives, which compromised concurrently the implementation of any plan of national development. It is thus necessary to do something and immediately, in order to at least guarantee in the long term the access to basic education, to all the children of the country, without distinction.
With this proclamation, we, signatories of this proclamation:
Support without reserve the recriminations of the Haitian people as regards to socio-economic development and democracy based on a universal and outstanding schooling system for the children of Haiti;
Support without reserve the totality of the Haitian families that endorse, with nearly 40% of their low incomes, the education of their children; Haiti being one of the three countries of planet where the government disengages itself as much from the educational sector;
Support without reserve the aspirations of the parents and the young Haitians towards an education of quality which allows for a full and whole participation in the democratic life of the country;
Support without reserve any reform of the Ministry of national education and its system of governorship from the point of view of the implementation of these recriminations;
Bring our support without reserve to the idea of a National Pact on Education and Training as being a social consensus upon which it is possible to found a society righter and better equipped to face the challenges of human development during the next decades.
Signed proclamation by the following people and organizations:
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