Looking at a list of cities that have hosted OMEP’s World Conferences over the years is subtly illuminating. Paris, Athens. Bangkok, Quebec. Bologna will follow in 2025. The list is cosmopolitan, but it is biased in some ways, much like a well-traveled diplomat’s passport. And if you look closely enough, you begin to wonder exactly who is establishing the agenda for the youngest students in the world.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948, the same year OMEP, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, was established. It wasn’t a coincidence. Early childhood education is a right, not a privilege, according to the organization’s founding principles. Currently, over 60 nations take part. That scope is intended to be reflected in the conferences they host. However, there is a difference between breadth in a room and breadth on a membership list.
There was real enthusiasm at the 76th World Assembly, which took place in Bangkok last July. There was a sense of urgency to the theme, Right from the Start for ECCE: Step Beyond All Together, which seemed appropriate at the time. The climate catastrophe, forced migration, the deterioration of democracy, and the gradual harm caused to young children by what Mathias Urban, Director of the Early Childhood Research Centre at Dublin City University, referred to as “global capitalism and neoliberalism” were all mentioned by keynote speakers. That kind of language is uncommon in international education forums. For a brief while, it seemed as though something sincere was taking place.
And yet. There was a constant conflict between the language’s aspirations and the room’s layout as I watched presentations about Tashkent commitments and funding gaps and listened to UNESCO present data. The speakers were frequently from wealthy international organizations or the Global North. Although the practitioners presenting best practices from Thailand, Kenya, and Cyprus were interesting and obviously doing significant work, they frequently appeared as case studies rather than as masterminds of the greater discourse. It’s a subtle thing. However, it builds up.
In ways that make geography seem even more important, the data displayed in Bangkok was sobering. In low-income nations, only 57% of teachers have received training. In fact, the percentage of students enrolled in organized pre-primary education decreased from 75% in 2020 to 72% in 2023. Pre-primary education is said to have a “much more serious” financial gap than any other level. These statistics are not abstract. They speak for kids in areas that don’t frequently host these discussions and are occasionally hardly represented in them.
The fact that some of this tension seemed to be acknowledged rather than resolved makes OMEP’s Bangkok conference worth taking very seriously. At the very least, the creation of the Guiding Principles on ECCE Rights, which were presented there as a multi-stakeholder initiative, represents an effort to go beyond declarations and toward something that is enforceable under international human rights law. It is still very much up in the air whether that process will actually put the voices of communities in low-income countries front and center or if it will be largely shaped by the same institutions that have always shaped these frameworks.
With its focus on the arts, culture, and play, Bologna in 2025 promises a different register—one that is friendlier, more imaginative, and less formal. For a conference, this lovely city is ideal. However, in early childhood education, beauty and closeness to authority have never been issues. Who gets to speak, who gets to make decisions, and whose children the ensuing policies truly affect have always been issues. These conferences’ location doesn’t create that issue, but it does subtly reflect it. Even if no one at the podium explicitly states so, it’s important to take note of that.
