These policies were laid down in the Belem Framework for Action adopted after extensive negotiations at CONFINTEA VI.
“Now is the time for action, because the cost of not acting is too high,” states the final document, adopted at the end of the International Conference on Adult Education that for four days gathered over 1,500 participants from over 156 Member States in Belem, Brazil.
Key demands of the UNSECO conference, which has taken place every twelve years since 1949, were to improve the financing of Adult Education, both by national governments as well as by the various donors in development cooperation and through greater efforts in the fight against illiteracy and poverty.
In the many workshops and panel discussions, the potential of Adult Education and what it offers was clear, in particular in addressing the current crisis.
The Belem Framework for Action stresses that “Adult Learning and Education have a critical role in responding to contemporary cultural, economic, political and social challenges,” and it underlines the need to place Adult Learning and Education (ALE) in a broader context of sustainable development. It acknowledges that effective policy, governance, financing, participation, inclusion, equity and quality are all necessary conditions for adults and young people to be able to exercise their right to education.
For the first time, a southern hemisphere country was the host of CONFINTEA and of the run-up civil society FISC conference. In this forum, which was mostly drawn up by the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE), more than 1,000 NGO representatives were able to voice their demands.
Both events once again made very clear the significant gap between the importance of Adult Education and Lifelong Learning for the future management of important tasks on the one hand, and on the other, their neglect by governments in both the northern and the southern hemispheres.
