Five years ago to the day, as sovereign States and civil society organisations from across the Greater South converged on the capital city of the Republic of Djibouti for the III ForumBIE 2030, the Universal Declaration of Balanced and Inclusive Education (UDBIE) was proclaimed “as a common standard, that all peoples, nations, and institutions may strive, collectively and individually, to achieve Humanity’s eternal aspirations.” Back in 2020, this collective commitment to Balanced and Inclusive Education constituted the fruit of years of consultations – from Bangkok to Geneva, passing by Lagos and Panama – and of collective endeavours – from the call for a Global Guide for Balanced and Inclusive Education at the I ForumBIE 2030 at the United Nations Office in Geneva to the II ForumBIE 2030’s International Call for Balanced and Inclusive Education (ICBIE) in Mexico City.
It was a jubilant moment. Yet for those of us who had the privilege of witnessing this lengthy process and its historic culmination, we also knew that, whilst the seeds planted years prior had been nurtured into a fruit swelling with promise, the fruit itself was still to ripen. Without political will, collective commitment, and effective action, declarations are bound to remain elusive aspirations – the seed that became tree will see its fruits sour. The UDBIE had been proclaimed, but the road ahead would still be long, the journey still arduous, the path full of tribulations before passing from ink upon paper, from moral pledge to tangible and lasting transformation of education systems.
And case in point: merely a year later, at the UDBIE’s first anniversary, as the 29th of January was declared the International Day of Balanced and Inclusive Education (BIE Day), it was in an entirely different context, with the atmosphere of jubilation supplanted by universal concern. By then, in 2021, the world had already been ravaged by little less than a year of COVID-19, with over 1.6 billion children having been left out of school, 112 billion days of education lost overall, and reports estimating, at the time, that nearly 24 million learners were at the risk of never returning to school after the lockdowns. The balance within a year of our collective commitment to Balanced and Inclusive Education (BIE) was frightening.
It is in this context, with this history of triumphs and trials, that the Organisation of Southern Cooperation (OSC), as mandated custodian of the UDBIE, commemorates BIE Day. That is, if by the time BIE day was declared in 2021 the world that we had known in January 2020 had seemingly come undone, faced with the summoning, generational challenge of reconstruction, ours would be the lucid, unwavering determination to not merely seek to revert to the world that we had known – a world that had too often disappointed us, a world that had been too stubborn in its injustice, a world that had been too oblivious to development’s human dimension –, but to commence the collective construction of a new, more equitable, and solidary world, whose cornerstone would be Balanced and Inclusive Education.
BIE Day, accordingly, is not merely a day of celebrations, diplomatic pontifications, or symbolic ceremonies. Neither is it the moment to relish the role of a Cassandra by prophesying doom, nor to bask in misguided triumphalism by sermonising on ideals with the blinding zeal of excessive optimism. BIE Day is the annual occasion for us to collectively take stock of how far we have come in realising the vision proclaimed within the UDBIE and of where we have fallen short of our commitments to transform our education systems. It is the opportunity for us, guided by this balance of accounts, to address the shortcomings experienced, with lessons drawn to guide our endeavours, and to build upon the progress made, with a pace that increasingly accelerates.
And today, on this BIE Day 2025, at the OSC, we are entirely mindful of the fact that both sides of the scale are loaded:
At the risk of stating the obvious, leadership of the transformation requires transformational leadership, wherein contextuality is not only a variable to be taken into account, but the very foundation of the endeavour itself – one that is enshrined within the UDBIE as one of the four pillars of Balanced and Inclusive Education. And because, regardless of noble intentions, it is neither desirable nor, indeed, possible to contextualise on behalf of others, the OSC cannot lead this process. As the custodian of the UDBIE, it can and must serve as a community of mutual learning and a platform of policy and technical support – perhaps, even, as an accelerator of the transformation – but it can certainly not lead it. The leadership of the balanced and inclusive transformation of education must and can only be national and local – at the level of ministries of education, of local communities, of school boards, of each classroom. But if context is the foundation, then institutional and individual capacities are the pillars of this edifying, humanist edifice.
In 2024, then, acutely aware of the profound limitations of the model consisting in an international organisation parachuting its experts in the capital cities of its Member States for two-day capacity-building workshops, we inaugurated the OSC Institute as the capacity-building arm of the Greater South’s organisation. With this decision, we moved from irregular, two-day workshops to intensive, two-month capacity-building programmes in Balanced and Inclusive Education. And within 9 months, in three cohorts, the experts from 15 countries completed the programme – not merely to enhance their individual capacities, but to equip them with the means to cascade the programme within their respective institutions, reinforcing in turn the capacities of their peers and colleagues for nationally-led transformation. And as of January 2025, only a handful of months after returning to their respective homes, these OSC Institute alumni have successfully done so with over 300 of their compatriots.
Since technology’s centrality is no longer in dispute, and conscious of the fact that the new cannot be built with the tools of the old, we also launched the beta version (or, in technical jargon, minimally viable product) of the Greater South Learning Enrichment Resources Nexus (GreSLERN), an open-source digital platform to enable curriculum development centres and practitioners to access and collaboratively develop interactive, balanced and inclusive learning resources. And as of January 2025, 29 institutions have already been onboarded.
As committed legatees of the paradigm of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and faithful to the UDBIE’s affirmation that “Humanity is authentic to its essence only when engaged in dialogue, in and with the world”, we launched, in collaboration with the International Cooperation Group of Brazilian Universities (GCUB), an annual post-graduate scholarship programme for youth of our Member States – because the balanced and inclusive transformation of education is as much a social process as it is a cognitive one, it cannot be limited to what occurs within the four walls of the classroom: it must also encompass the enriching moments of encounter, of exchange, of communion outside of the formal education system. And as of January 2025, 300 youth from OSC Member States have been provided with the opportunity to pursue further education in renowned Brazilian universities.
These achievements, amongst others, testify to how far we have come since the disheartening context in which the International Day of Balanced and Inclusive Education was declared in 2021. Challenges were overcome, obstacles were surmounted, and tangible progress was made.
But, once more, for BIE Day to serve its purpose, it must be approached with the lucidity of acknowledging our respective shortcomings and with perpetual, salubrious dissatisfaction at our own accomplishments. In order to fruitfully accelerate the pace of the transformation:
In 2025, the OSC Institute must undergo rapid expansion, both quantitatively as well as qualitatively. Quantitively, it must be able to receive a greater number of experts per cohort, democratise access further with online and hybrid modalities, and enable – beyond institutions – practitioners to benefit from its capacity-building programmes. Qualitatively, it must further refine and develop the existing BIE programme based upon the feedback of its 2024 alumni, roll out additional – including shorter – courses based upon the request and needs articulated by Member States, and provide continuous, distance learning opportunities to its alumni.
The Greater South Learning Enrichment Resources Nexus (GreSLERN) must undergo a profound metamorphosis and be made stronger in substance. A profound metamorphosis, because a number of rapid and consequential updates to the platform must be made in order to become more user-friendly, provide greater functionalities, and be accompanied by effective training as institutions are onboarded. Stronger in substance, because GreSLERN must live up to its purpose by equally serving as a practical, comprehensive, and growing repository of existing balanced and inclusive learning resources, requiring, on the one hand, accelerated in-house development and, on the other, greater collaboration and partnerships with other institutions to provide useful, adaptable content on the platform.
The scholarship programme must be expanded and enhanced. Expanded, by maintaining the existing up to 400 annual scholarship opportunities launched with the International Cooperation Group of Brazilian Universities (GCUB), whilst simultaneously providing additional scholarships to the youth of Member States in other in other regions of the Greater South. Enhanced, by providing more significant, responsive support to the awardees of scholarships – so that a greater number proceed with the scholarship once they have been admitted – and inscribing it within a larger mobility scheme across our three continents through the launch of the OSC’s Framework to Reinforce Exchanges between Youth and Regions through Education (FREYRE).
These efforts must also be backed by greater South-South cooperation, with the provision of a dynamic, multilateral, and multi-sectorial platform for knowledge exchange, mutual learning, and collaboration in Balanced and Inclusive Education amongst ministries of education, academia, and civil society. 2025 must hence constitute the year in which the preparation for the reinstatement and annual convening of the ForumBIE 2030, from which the UDBIE was born, are completed.
Finally, amongst the areas that ought to be catalysed in the upcoming year, we must decisively bolster our endeavours to ensure renewed and sustained political will, the consolidation of a diverse and determined critical mass, and the provision of greater financing for Balanced and Inclusive Education. For without political will, our ideals will remain nothing more than noble, eluding aspirations; without a critical mass, it is impossible for political will to translate into effective action; and without the necessary resources, it is impossible for sustained political will and a critical mass to ensure that effective action morphs into lasting transformation.
In sum, the scales on this 29th January 2025 are balanced: we have collectively made extraordinary progress, but there is still much more to do. Accordingly, as we greet and bid farewell to this year’s International Day of Balanced and Inclusive Education, we must remain determined to continue accelerating the pace for the UDBIE’s vision to be realised and delivering results that definitively tip the scale towards the transformation to which we all aspire – that is, until every single learner may benefit from a transformed education so that they may, in turn, transform our world.
