Over decades, a certain kind of frustration develops. The kind that results from being heard, applauded, and then subtly shelved rather than completely ignored. For the better part of 76 years, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, or OMEP as it is known in French, has been managing that particular conflict. OMEP was founded in Prague in 1948 in the unadulterated aftermath of a war that had devoured children as casually as it had everything else. The organization was founded on the simple belief that a child’s early years are too important to be considered a domestic afterthought.
At last, that conviction is beginning to gain traction in a way that feels different from earlier. The world around them has changed, not the arguments themselves, which haven’t really changed.
The atmosphere at the 76th World Assembly, which took place in Bangkok last July, was one of cautious momentum mixed with urgency. Under the theme “Right from the Start for ECCE: Step Beyond All Together,” delegates from more than 60 nations convened to discuss topics ranging from democracy erosion to climate displacement.
The director of Dublin City University’s Early Childhood Research Centre, Mathias Urban, put it simply: young children are being born into what he called a collision of crises: poverty, ecological collapse, forced migration, pandemic fallout, and a slow erosion of democratic institutions. The Asia Pacific Regional Network for Early Childhood Chair of the Board, Sheldon Shaeffer, referred to it as a “polycrisis.” It’s a clinical term for something that, in reality, feels extremely frightening and deeply human.
OMEP has been arguing that the response to this polycrisis cannot start when children finally enter formal schooling at the age of six or seven. This argument has been made carefully, persistently, and occasionally in the face of significant institutional indifference. By then, a child’s cognitive and emotional development architecture is largely established. It’s not just compassionate to step in sooner. The argument is that it’s becoming more and more a matter of national resilience. Children are not the only ones who suffer when governments underfund early childhood care. Their own futures are being mortgaged.
That argument was uncomfortably clear from the Bangkok data. The results of the first worldwide report on early childhood care and education were presented by Rokhaya Fall Dawara, ECCE Lead at UNESCO headquarters. In fact, enrollment in one year of structured pre-primary education had decreased, from 75% in 2020 to 72% in 2023. Just 57% of early childhood educators in low-income nations have formal training. To achieve universal enrollment goals by 2030, at least six million more educators would need to be hired worldwide. She pointed out that pre-primary education has the biggest financial disparity of any level of the educational system. Pre-primary education should receive at least 10% of national education budgets, but very little of that amount is being allocated.
The discrepancy between what the research indicates and what governments actually do is difficult to ignore. OMEP has been carrying out that research, publishing it, presenting it at UN forums, and forming partnerships with regional organizations on five continents, including UNESCO and UNICEF. OMEP national committees have taken part in more than 1,200 sustainability-focused educational initiatives in 35 countries since 2008 alone, reaching about 150,000 young children and 15,500 early childhood educators. That’s a big operation. That is a persistent, internationally coordinated campaign that is gradually shifting the direction of policy discourse.
The change in framing is noteworthy. While the humanitarian argument is still perfectly valid, OMEP and its allies are no longer merely making it. The strategic one is being made. Speaking in Bangkok, Asiya Foster, Vice President of OMEP for North America and the Caribbean, discussed the relationship between social justice, economic resilience, and environmental advocacy. Her words resonate differently in a finance ministry than they do when discussing child welfare. This rephrasing may be intentional, a calculated effort to address the branches of government that oversee budgets rather than those that attend conferences.
Observing this organization’s operations gives the impression that it has surpassed its own public profile. OMEP contributed to the creation of the Tashkent Declaration, which unified pledges for inclusive, equitable early childhood services. Guiding Principles on ECCE Rights are currently being developed by a global advocacy group with the goal of bringing together legal requirements that are dispersed throughout various human rights instruments into something that governments can truly implement.
It is still genuinely unclear whether that action will take place and whether ministries of finance and security will finally take what educators have known since 1948. However, the discourse has changed. It turns out that the nursery was always a matter of national security. All OMEP needed was the world to catch up.
