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Honduras: right to education - urgent action
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From: "Rights Action" <info@rightsaction.org>
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Subject: Honduras: right to education - urgent action
Date sent: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 12:02:38 -0400
Organization: Rights Action
June 7, 2003
URGENT ACTION
COPINH DEMANDS EDUCATION REFORM IN HONDURAS
?Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to
govern, but impossible to enslave.? Henry Peter Broughan
COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of
Honduras) yesterday took control of a local Department of Education
building, demanding education reform, particularly in the rural,
predominantly indigenous regions where teachers are scarce if not
altogether absent.
Please send emails [see below] to the government of Honduras.
If you want on/ off this elist: info@rightsaction.org
===
[This article/ urgent action was prepared by Jessica Pupovac, who
works with Rights Action in Honduras]
Over 500 years ago, Cristopher Columbus landed in the Bahia Islands
of
what is now known as Honduras. Within one generation the
colonialists
were running every pueblo and remote village throughout the lands.
Within two generations, almost every Indigenous language had been
eradicated.
Popular and indigenous movements in neighboring Guatemala, El
Salvador
and Nicaragua have taken up arms to resist US-backed State
repression
and to demand their rights on various occasions during the second half
of the twentieth century, but not in Honduras. Some Hondurans I have
met call themselves a ?docile? people, beaten down so many times
they
no longer attempt to get up and demand what is rightfully theirs.
But not in La Esperanza, Intibuca, where COPINH (Civic Council of
Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras) yesterday ?took?
the
Department of Education building, demanding education reform,
particularly in the rural, predominantly indigenous regions where
teachers are scarce if not altogether absent. COPINH is a grassroots
community development organization working for indigenous and
human
rights throughout western Honduras in Lenca descendent and
campesino
communities.
In this case, COPINH is demanding the resignation of a corrupt local
Director of the Ministry of Education and to address the lack of
educators in rural and indigenous communities. With a folkloric music
band, a group of about ten women making the tortillas throughout the
day, and a crowd of approximately 50 people, the majority of whom
traveled from rural communities throughout the region, the people of
COPINH arrived at the local Ministry of Education at 7am yesterday
morning with no intention of leaving until their demands are met.
The recent UN Report on Human Development found that the most
impoverished regions of Honduras are the departments of Lempira,
Intibucá and Santa Barbara, not coincidentally the regions where the
largest percentage of Honduras? indigenous population resides. These
departments, in addition to La Paz, are home to the majority of
COPINH?s constituency.
Not only are the majority of Hondurans extremely poor, but economic
development stimulation and stabilization programs, designed and
initiated by International Finance Institutions (IFIs), have
maintained or worsened the poverty of the majority. The World Bank
and Inter-American Development Bank have invested highly in
Honduras,
but with a largely negative as opposed to positive effect on poor and
exploited communities. Recent studies show that Poverty Reduction
Strategies, implemented in many African, Latin American and Asian
countries by the IFIs, have increased the number of exploited people
living in poverty. As the local paper El Tiempo pointed out last
week, Honduras is not exception. According to the Social Forum on
External Debt in Honduras, ?the medicine has turned out to be worse
than the illness.? (El Tiempo, June 3, 2003)
Honduras? external debt is $5.6 billion, and even there were no debt
it is hard to believe that investing in social services and the basic
rights of the majority would be a priority of Honduras? current
administration or the IFIs. According to Roy Guevara Arzú, Secretery
General of Afroamérica XXI, (an Inter-American organization that
fights for Afro-American rights): ?The methods that the current
administration is utilizing are contrary to any initiative that could
realistically reduce poverty -- they are implementing more taxes,
devaluating the currency and investing little in the social sector ...
the resources that have they only use to pay the state debts.? (El
Tiempo, June 3, 2003)
RIGHT TO EDUCATION
The immediate aim of COPINH?s demonstration is to force the
resignation of Hugo Eduardo Vasquez, who they claim is a corrupt
Deputy Director of the Ministry of Education in the department of
Intibucá. Vasquez is a prominent member of the Partido Nacional, the
ruling party in Honduras that is notorious for corruption: last year,
the President of the National Congress and others took out
government
loans totaling tens of millions of Lempira (Honduran currency) and
used it to cancel their own debts. Under their rule, only areas of
the country that align themselves with their party receive priority
for social services.
An exploited and misdirected country, coupled with corrupt leaders
stealing from the public purse leaves many impoverished areas without
adequate schooling. Those communities that do have ?operational?
schools often lack funds for enough teachers for the number of
students in the community. Approximately 16 schools in the
municipality of La Esperanza have only one teacher for 100-150
students.
Recently, many teachers have been transferred from rural, indigenous
areas into the larger towns. Others have simply stopped receiving
their salaries. Teacher Carlos Suezo, representative of COPEMA
(Colegio of High School Teachers), is a constant presence at the
demonstration. He says that although he has not received a salary
since February, he continues to teach his classes. Carlos loves what
he does and does not have a family to support. Most do not have the
freedom to make such a sacrifice and have had to look for employment
elsewhere.
If a rural community has a school, it typically is only primary level.
According to UN statistics, the average Honduran receives 5 years of
education in his or her lifetime. If a student wishes to continue
their studies and advance to middle or high school, they have to do so
at an average cost of L2,000 a month (for materials, lodging and
transportation). In a region where families earn on average L40-50 a
day (less than $3), continuing education beyond the fifth grade is
nothing more than a pipe dream.
Therefore, students from rural communities can never go on to
become
teachers and return to their communities to teach, and the people are
never given the means by which to educate themselves or each other
and
thereby improve their condition -- and the cycle of poverty and
exclusion continues.
?All agree that the single most important key to development and to
poverty alleviation is education,? touts James D Wolfenson, President
of the World Bank, on the World Bank website. Yet, while the IFIs and
governments of the wealthy and powerful ?first world? nations stress
the need for ?third world? education (?in order to improve its
education systems to have a more skillful and therefore more
productive workforce?), their policies prevent that from happening.
Throughout Africa, Latin American and Asia, privatization of education
is being pushed by the global development banks, which experts say
will raise service charges, putting education even farther out of
reach for marginalized populations, and meanwhile efforts to take the
indigenous populations into account are cosmetic and superficial.
Evidence of this is found in the fact that there is little or no
disaggregated data for indigenous populations in Latin America,
although they are disproportionately represented among the continent?s
poor. They are largely absent from the planning, design and
implementation of development policies and programs that directly
affect their lives and communities.
However, COPINH has organized programs to train indigenous
teachers to
teach their communities in an inclusive manner. They have begun to
collect and organize information about the repression they face and
how they plan to combat it. And today, they are organizing to tell
their government, and the rest of the world, that they will not be
forgotten. They are pointing out the deficiencies of the education
system in an attempt to create a better future.
===
SUPPORT EDUCATION FOR INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN
HONDURAS
Please cut and paste the following and send it to info@se.gob.hn (with
?Para Carlos Avela Molina? in the subject line). Please 'cc' copies
to: Dr. Hugo Noe Pino, Honduran Ambassador to the USA,
embassy@hondurasemb.org; Embassy of Honduras to Canada,
embhonca@magma.ca and Roberto Martinez, Third Secretary,
roma@magma.ca; Denis Thibault, Canadian Ambassador for
Honduras,
sjose-gr@dfait-maeci.gc.ca.
ESPAÑOL ABAJO
June 7, 2003
Dear Mr. Minister of Education Ingeniero Carlos Avela Molina:
I write to express my support of the Lenca communities, affiliated
with COPINH, parent associations and educators who have organized
mobilizations in order to improve the quality of education for the
indigenous and campesino children of Honduras. The demands of
these
mobilizations are the following:
- The depolitization of the education system, in which many Lenca
communities are without teachers because they have been removed or
transferred to schools in urban regions as part of political favors.
- That the government provide teachers to the communities in
proportion to the number of students in said community.
- That the government open middle schools in rural areas without
economic resources.
- That the Ministry of Education support the program of indigenous
educator training.
- That an inclusive, multi-cultural focus be incorporated into the
educational system in indigenous communities.
- That teacher?s rights be respected.
We want to express to you the fact that the world has been alerted and
we await an appropriate solution that will resolve the just demands of
this right to education movement. We hope you will take advantage of
this opportunity to show the world, and the people of Honduras, that
you reject corruption and that the development of indigenous
communities is important to you and that so is education.
===
6 Junio 2003
Estimado Señor Ministerio de Educacion Ingeniero Carlos Avela
Molina:
Le envio un saludo respetuoso y fraterno.
El motivo de la presente a parte del anterior es para expresarle mi
apoyo a las comunidades Lencas, afiliadas al COPINH, asociaciones
de
padres y madres de familia y educadores y educadoras quienes han
desarollado mobilizaciones para mejorar la calidad de educacion de
los
niños indigenas y campesinos en Honduras. Las demandas de estes
mobilizaciones son:
Despolitizacion del sistema educativo ya que muchas comunidades
Lencas
no tienen maestros ya que estos fueron quitados o pasados a
escuelas
del Centro.
Que provean maestros a las comunidades segun la necesidad (de
acuerdo
al numero de estudiantes) de cada comunidad.
Que abran centros de educación pre-basica en comunidades con
pocos
recursos economicos.
Que den apoyo al programa de formación de educadores indigenas.
Que desarrollen el enfoque de inter-culturalidad en la educación en
las comunidades indigenas.
Que respeten los derechos de educadores.
Que cese la manipulacion de la educacion por parte del diputado
oficialista Hugo Eduardo Vasquez.
Le manifestamos que en el mundo estamos alertas y esperando una
solucion justa a estas demandas.
Esperamos que le va a aprovechar esta oportunidad a mostrar al
mundo y
a los indigenos de su pais que sí, les importan y que valoran la
educacion en Honduras.
Atte,
===
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