Tracing OMEP’s conference history over the past 20 years reveals a pattern that is hard to ignore. Quebec in 2008; Mexico City in 2007. Gothenburg in 2010. Bologna, Prague, Athens, and now Poznań in 2026. With very few exceptions, the list reads like a tour of the Global North, with sporadic stops in Shanghai or Bangkok but no real focus on the areas where the early childhood crisis is most severe, underfunded, and unseen by global policymakers.
That is a serious criticism. For more than 75 years, OMEP has worked in more than 60 countries, carrying real moral weight in the rooms where education policy is decided. Conversations at the 76th conference in Bangkok felt urgent and sincere, especially when it came to the “polycrisis” that Mathias Urban described as changing the lives of young children: the slow violence of economic inequality, forced relocation, climate catastrophe, and eroding democracies. These aren’t abstract concepts. They are realities that have been experienced. However, the Global South is where they are most acutely experienced.
The Bangkok gathering in 2024 revealed some startling information. According to Rokhaya Fall Dawara of UNESCO, 30% of children in nations with data are not developing normally. In low-income nations, the percentage of trained teachers is only 57%. Between 2020 and 2023, fewer students enrolled in pre-primary education for even one year. Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and portions of Latin America account for the majority of these figures. Although these regions have contributed practitioners, researchers, and advocates to OMEP’s global network, they hardly ever host the flagship event that shapes the direction of that work.
The Poznań conference in 2026 is a significant intellectual event. It is both historically significant and pedagogically sound to center it around Janusz Korczak’s legacy—his insistence that children are people deserving of dignity now, not just as future citizens. Korczak was a pioneer in morality. And Poland, his native country, is entitled to that hosting privilege. However, it’s possible that another exquisitely structured European forum isn’t what OMEP needs for 2027. Something messier, more difficult to organize, and more uncomfortable in terms of location might be required.
In early childhood circles, there is a perception that the conversation surrounding ECCE rights still has a Northern accent. This perception is expressed quietly rather than during plenary sessions. Western universities frequently write the frameworks. Usually, the keynote speakers travel by plane from New York or Dublin. The praised educational models, such as Scandinavian forest schools and Reggio Emilia, are the result of societies with funding realities that differ greatly from those of, say, Ghana or Indonesia. Their worth is not diminished by any of this. However, it does make one wonder whose knowledge is taken into account by default.
The discussions would undoubtedly change if OMEP 2027 were to take place in Nairobi, Accra, or Bogotá. structurally as well as symbolically. Instead, the temperature of the room would be set by local researchers who now travel halfway across the world to present. Every conference’s cherished “study visits to early childhood centers” would reveal something different: grassroots community initiatives operating on meager budgets and yielding results worth comprehending, rather than Scandinavian-style playrooms.
The official location of 2027 is still unknown. These choices are made internally by the OMEP assembly under the direction of member committees and organizational capability. However, after reading the Poznań agenda’s emphasis on justice and children’s voices and witnessing the 2024 Bangkok discussions about Tashkent commitments and equity gaps, it seems as though the organization is circling an idea it hasn’t fully committed to yet. It is not polite to place the Global South at the center of early childhood discourse. It could be OMEP’s most honest course of action going forward.
