• World Social Forum Charter of Principles
• I WEF Charter (2001)
• II WEF Charter (2003)
• III WEF Charter (2004)
• Global Platform - 2007 Nairobi

III WEF Charter (2004)

Constructing a world platform of struggles

The World Education Forum is strongly connected to the World Social Forum, because if another world is possible then another education is necessary. The principles, goals, and methodologies of this education we are looking for have been constructed in several meetings and they have been expressed in documents such as the 2001 and 2003 Charter of Porto Alegre, the 2001 Quebec Statement, the 2004 São Paulo Statement, and the 2004 Statement of the 4th Congress of Education International, among others. It is time to advance in the world struggle in favor of the universal right to education. We therefore: State the universal right to emancipatory education. State the inalienable and full right to public and free education with social quality for all. Demand the guarantee of attendance and permanence at school, as well as the right to learn at school. Demand the democratization of different kind of knowledge and of understandings to the benefit of the whole humankind. Refuse any form of privatization and mercantilization of education, science, and technology. Condemn the illegitimate appropriation of popular knowledge and of native populations’ knowledge. Reaffirm the centrality of education for the human rights, justice, and peace.

The third edition of the World Education Forum adopts and emphasizes the following principles:
 1. Education is a priority and an inalienable human right, throughout people’s lives.
 2. This right is essential for the access to other rights, for the construction of solidarity-based values, for the emancipation and practice of citizenship.
 3. Public policies must insure the realization of these rights.
 4. It is a States’ duty to guarantee, in a universal and free manner, without discrimination or exclusion, the full right to an emancipatory public education, in all levels and modalities.

Having exposed this, we propose the following agenda of struggles:
 1. Defend, intransigently, public education in every levels, as it must be a non-transferable duty of the State.
 2. Organize a world movement in defense and for the promotion of free and public education in all the levels and modalities.
 3. Refuse any international and national agreement that promotes the mercantilization of education, knowledge, science, and technology, particularly the agreement related to the WTO trade and services.
 4. Refuse structural adjust programs that pressure governments to disarrange public services.
 5. Refuse the mismanagement of national and multinational companies in the public educative system.
 6. Promote actions that recognize the singularities of subjects and communities, and which guarantee equity concerning the access to education, the diversity of gender, ethnic groups, and culture, and which also consider the educational potentiality of non-schooling environments.
 7. Demand gender equity concerning the access to education and to environments that decide on public policies.
 8. Promote actions against racism and against social class differences.
 9. Present to national governments an agenda that prioritizes programs for the elimination of illiteracy, programs related to educational inclusion of the most excluded population and programs against the exploitation of child labor.
 10. Connect with the World Social Forum and with other struggle forums in order to guarantee that the workers’ experiences, qualifications, and knowledge are respected.
 11. Demand that governments give value to workers in education, respecting their professional rights and guaranteeing fair working conditions.
 12. Defend a form of professional education that refuses the logic of employmentability and that includes the ethnical, esthetical, and political dimensions.
 13. Demand the democratization in the management of public institutions and of social policies, especially the educational policies, relating these to intersectorial policies that complement them and strengthen the educative communities.
 14. Promote the social control of the education funding.
 15. Strengthen world mobilizations and the education for a culture of justice and peace, solidarity and sustainability in the world.
 16. Encourage children, teenagers and youth’s protagonism, recognizing their social identities as participants in the construction of knowledge.