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Accountability for SDG4 through Citizen participation: keep your promises

GCE’s Global Action Week for Education in 2018 takes place between the 22nd and 28th of April, following up on last year’s theme of accountability for SDG4 and active citizen participation. GAWE 2018, entitled “Accountability for SDG4 through Citizen Participation” will continue focusing on holding governments and the international community to account for implementing the full SDG4 agenda – asking governments to “Keep Your Promises”.

After the Global Partnership for Education’s (GPE) Financing Conference at the start of 2018, where developing country governments, donor countries and various partners pledged to increase funds to education, it is time for governments to prove they are actually working towards financing public, equitable, inclusive and free education – it is time to act. That is why we are calling for governments to “Keep Your Promises” – pledges made towards funding SDG4 must be implemented effectively, ensuring that children and adults around the world can receive quality public education.

Education underpins many of the SDGs, and it is fundamental to the realisation of other rights. Governments must deliver on this goal, and citizens must play their part in holding them to account for it.

For this, citizen and civil society participation must be institutionalised in any decision-making process which impacts on their lives. Yet in too many countries the voice of citizens is being stifled; across all regions of the world, certain national governments have taken aggressive actions to shrink civil society spaces, from restrictions on funding, repression of ‘political activity’ or protest, and even direct criminalisation of civil society activity.

This year, the Global Campaign for Education is calling on governments to:

• develop credible roadmaps for implementation of the full SDG4 agenda, with clear mechanisms for transparency, allowing for active meaningful participation of civil society;
• halt the criminalisation and shrinking of civil society spaces, both nationally and internationally;
• strengthen public systems and state capacities to ensure that education is free, quality, and equitable and reject turning towards low fee/”affordable” private schooling as an answer to the education crisis.

We are asking teachers, students, education campaigners and members of the public to take part in events happening all around the world during Global Action Week for Education, which runs from 22-28th April 2018.

About Global Action Week for Education

Global Action Week for Education is one of the major focal points for the education movement. Created and led by the Global Campaign for Education, it provides everyone campaigning for the right to education with an opportunity to make targeted efforts to achieve change on the ground, with the added support of millions of members of the public worldwide joining together for the same cause.