At international education conferences, there is a certain kind of tension that develops in the corridors between sessions rather than during keynote addresses. That tension was evident during OMEP’s 76th World Assembly in Bangkok last July. Under the theme “Right from the Start for ECCE: Step Beyond All Together,” delegates from more than 60 nations convened. Although the phrase sounded ambitious enough, the discussions taking place off-stage raised more difficult issues. In reality, who sets this agenda? Whose expertise matters? Will the answers have changed by the time OMEP 2027 arrives?
Since 1948, OMEP has existed. That is almost eight decades of upholding early childhood care and education as a basic human right, which is a significant institutional legacy by any standard. The organization’s charter states unequivocally that children’s rights from birth to age eight must be upheld everywhere. Suzanne Herbinière Lebert, the second World President of OMEP, put it succinctly and firmly back in Vienna in 1950: children should receive education in addition to protection. That framing is still relevant today. The issue is that the systems intended to support those kids have not always kept up with the complexity of the world they are growing up in.
Mathias Urban of Dublin City University stood in front of the assembly in Bangkok and succinctly described the situation: the devastating effects of global capitalism, the erosion of democracy, forced relocation, and climate catastrophe. He advocated for early childhood education to react from what he called a position of “concrete hope and capability”—that is, real transformation rather than reactive crisis management. The term “polycrisis” was introduced to the discussion by Sheldon Shaeffer, the chair of the ARNEC board. It feels accurate in a way that is nearly unsettling. It’s not just one issue. When multiple people collide at once, the kids who are affected are frequently the ones who are already the furthest away from receiving high-quality care.
Rokhaya Fall Dawara, UNESCO’s ECCE Lead, provided data in Bangkok that demonstrated how uneven the ground is still. In nations where data are available, about 30% of children are not developing normally. In fact, between 2020 and 2023, pre-primary enrollment decreased. Less than six out of ten teachers in low-income nations have formal training. These are actual children in actual locations who have already missed something they were meant to receive; they are not abstract statistics.
The accumulation of commitments that now require fulfillment is what gives OMEP 2027 a truly consequential feel. Standards were established by the Tashkent Declaration. In 2022 and 2023, the UN Special Rapporteurs made recommendations. Since then, a Global Advocacy Group on ECCE Rights has started creating Guiding Principles with the goal of combining legal requirements that are dispersed throughout various human rights instruments. There is scaffolding. The question is whether the organization spearheading these discussions can live up to the inclusivity it advocates; that is, whether educators from the most impacted communities are truly included in the voices forming these principles, or whether, as has happened far too frequently in the past, the loudest voices in the room still originate from the Global North.
Over the past few years, there has been a noticeable increase in the rhetoric surrounding decolonizing international education agendas, but structural change has remained uneven and sluggish. The strategic plan of OMEP does recognize the importance of valuing children’s perspectives, recognizing educator knowledge from the ground up, and strengthening democratic participation within the organization. These aren’t empty promises. However, commitments and results are two different things, and 2027 is getting close enough that the difference is beginning to matter.
It’s still unclear if OMEP will leave its upcoming World Assembly with a true shift in power rather than just language. However, the kids who are awaiting that response aren’t doing so in a vacuum. While the adults who purport to speak for them continue to meet, they are growing older in classrooms, underfunded preschools, and displacement camps.
