Youth Contribute to Education and Development Policy in MERCOSUR

What type of middle school do you want for the region? That was the question posed to over 260 young citizens participating in “Parlamento Juvenil MERCOSUR”, funded by the OAS Development Cooperation Fund (formerly FEMCIDI). Over the past five years, this project has been providing opportunities for young people to be part of the policy-making process as it relates to education strategy in the MECOSUR Region.

With the intent of maintaining open channels for dialogue and youth participation being advocated by the regional Educational Sector of MERCOSUR, participating member states have also proposed the strengthening of an institutionalized space for dialogue with the young students to hear “first hand” about the challenges that the education system is facing and the contributions that youth can offer to overcome them.

After a strong and participatory process of dialogue, deliberations and consensus building, the civic commitment of the young people of MERCOSUR was reflected in the Declaration of Piriápolis which recommended concrete action on six key themes, including: inclusive education, regional integration, human rights, gender, civic participation, and youth and employment.

In the words of Santiago Benitez, an Argentinian student participating in the Assembly, the Final Youth Declaration presented to parliamentarians at the XXXII Regular Meeting of the Parlamento MERCOSUR on November 10, 2014 in Montevideo, “pursues the dream of millions of young Latin Americans who want to transform their high school education.”

The project is coordinated by the Ministry of Education of Argentina, with the participation of the Ministries of Education of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay, and the MERCOSUR Parliament.  Parlamento Juvenil is consistent with the educational strategies of participating countries which are seeking to include the involvement of high school students in addressing the needs and perspectives of young people in order to strengthen their participation in the democratic process.

The first phase of this project took place between 2009-2010 when in 2010, youth representative presented a final declaration to then President Jose Alberto Mujica Cordano, at the XXVI Plenary Session of Parlamento MERCOSUR. In addition, the project developed and distributed school curricula that was adopted in 19,676 schools, reaching over 3.2 million youths from participating countries.

Since then, the project has continued to broaden the participation of young middle school students by institutionalizing spaces for dialogue on issues related to the decisions taken on their educational development, on public policies directed towards youth, and on the process of regional integration. In this regard and as part of the preparatory process for the Parlamento Juvenil 2014, five fora were held at the national level, including teacher training initiatives on regional integration, education in democratic values and practices, the strengthening of pedagogical knowledge, and efforts to improve national curricula in all of these areas.

Kim Osborne, Chief of the Technical Cooperation Section at the OAS-SEDI highlighted the results of the project and the value of strong partnerships in realizing regional aspirations, emphasizing that “we are very pleased that the Development Cooperation Fund has been able to work with the Parlamento Juvenil MERCOSUR to reach millions of young people in the region,  with a view towards ensuring that their ideas are included in the development of modern and relevant public policies that directly affect them.”