The focus of ASPBAE’s policy advocacy work is to ensure that Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 4) is pursued and implemented. ASPBAE works towards sustaining advocacy for increased and better financing for the new education agenda, ensuring stronger public education systems, and checking the unregulated drive for the privatisation and commercialisation of education. It also aims to press for institutionalised civil society participation in national, regional/sub-regional, and global education policy spaces, with broad-based, multi-stakeholder, participatory character of SDG and SDG 4 mechanisms and platforms promoted at national, regional, and global levels.
In September 2015, Heads of State and Government agreed to set the world on a path towards sustainable development through the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, which set out quantitative objectives across the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development - all to be achieved by 2030. 169 targets accompany the 17 goals and set out quantitative and qualitative objectives for the next 15 years. A set of indicators and a monitoring framework will also accompany the goals. The indicators are defined by the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG-SDGs).
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is an ambitious, aspirational, and universal agenda. When it adopted the new Agenda in September 2015, the international community recognised that education was essential for the success of all 17 of its goals. Ambitions for education are essentially captured in Sustainable Development Goal 4 which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030.
Throu gh the Incheon Declaration adopted at the World Education Forum in May 2015, UNESCO, as the United Nations’ specialised agency for education, was entrusted to lead the Education 2030 agenda with its partners. The roadmap to achieve the ten targets of the education goal is the Education 2030 Framework for Action, adopted in November 2015, which provides guidance to governments and partners on how to turn commitments into action. Education 2030, founded on the principle of the Right to Education, goes beyond past attempts to ensure access to basic education, as set out in the Education For All goals.
The main responsibility for implementing the agenda lies with governments, with UNESCO and partners providing support through coordinated policy advice, technical assistance, capacity development, and monitoring of progress at global, regional, and national levels.
Click here for several resources and links to global, national, and regional SDG-SDG4 processes.
The Civil Society Education Fund (CSEF) initiative of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) remains a major platform upon which ASPBAE pursues its capacity building work for education policy advocacy. This work is oriented towards developing the capacities of civil society organisations in advocacy on the right to education and lifelong learning to hold governments, donors, multilateral and intergovernmental bodies, and other decision-makers to account in meeting the globally-agreed commitments to education. With 19 countries covered by CSEF support, ASPBAE offers national and regional demand-led, context-based capacity building support as CSEF Regional Secretariat for the Asia Pacific.
In 2016, the ASPAE General Assembly also agreed priority to strengthening the youth constituency within ASPBAE. This involves initiatives that ensure a stronger voice and agency of young people in ASPBAE’s work and advocacies - as key stakeholders in education and lifelong learning. In this respect, ASPBAE looks to offer spaces for youth and youth advocates to discuss issues important to youth, to help inform and develop ASPBAE’s knowledge-base for its capacity building and advocacy efforts.
This section highlights ASPBAE’s work on capacity building for advocacy especially under the CSEF Programme and its work on capacity building to strengthen its youth constituency especially as education advocates.
Youth leaders come together to build capacities on leadership, campaigning, and gender equality in educationMORE
ASPBAE works with national, regional, and global civil society organisations to press governments, donors, inter-governmental bodies, and financing institutions to strengthen public education systems that deliver better in securing the right of all to quality basic, youth, and adult education within a lifelong learning frame. For this, different regional and global follow-up mechanisms for SDG 4 (and the SDGs) are in motion – promoting spaces for capacity building, joint planning, tracking progress, and for mobilising the necessary political will and financial commitments to meet the global and education goals.
In this section, we feature ASPBAE news, events, and activities in the Asia South Pacific region showcasing advocacy initiatives of its member organisations in working towards securing education and lifelong learning opportunities for all.
For more than a decade, ASPBAE has dedicated work to strengthening capacities of civil society organisations in education advocacy - advancing the right to education and lifelong learning of children, youth, and adults in the Asia Pacific region.
A range of resources are available here arising from ASPBAE’s work on capacity building on advocacy, its policy research work and the work of its partners. These cover the areas of education financing, adult education (including a focus on women), the SDG-SDG4 follow up processes, and youth leadership building.
Education has long been formally recognised as a human right since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948MORE
For the period 2015 to 2017, national education campaign coalitions, in cooperation with the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE)MORE
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