Preamble
GICACES, which was established in April 1999, is a constituency-based movement that brings together a broad alliance of actors to campaign for and defend education rights. Its membership comes from diverse self- governing national and regional education coalitions, teacher unions, international NGOs and networks, and children’s and youth rights organisations. It unites civil society across over a hundred countries in the common pursuit of the right to quality free public basic education for all. GICACES members, formerly working with GIC-MTC, a local Common Initiatiave Group registered in Cameroon as a not for profit Organisation.
Education is a fundamental right as well as an enabling right, strengthening people’s capacity to secure other rights. GICACES is committed to the indivisibility of rights and to making the case for education as a central responsibility of all States. The fulfilment of the right to education is key to promoting personal development, social and environmental justice, enhancing democracy, building active citizenship, promoting peace as well as supporting more tolerant and equal societies; education helps to improve health, reduces the spread of HIV, empowers girls and women, increases incomes and improves economic growth. Long-term investment in education can be fundamental to the struggle for addressing multiple crises and transforming present paradigms – towards supporting more sustainable human development. But all these arguments are secondary to the fact that education is a fundamental right recognised in numerous international treaties and conventions and in almost every national constitution.
Education is a fundamental right as well as an enabling right, strengthening people’s capacity to secure other rights. GICACES is committed to the indivisibility of rights and to making the case for education as a central responsibility of all States. The fulfilment of the right to education is key to promoting personal development, social and environmental justice, enhancing democracy, building active citizenship, promoting peace as well as supporting more tolerant and equal societies; education helps to improve health, reduces the spread of HIV, empowers girls and women, increases incomes and improves economic growth. Long-term investment in education can be fundamental to the struggle for addressing multiple crises and transforming present paradigms – towards supporting more sustainable human development. But all these arguments are secondary to the fact that education is a fundamental right recognised in numerous international treaties and conventions and in almost every national constitution.
Mission Statement
GICACES promotes and defends education as a basic human right and mobilizes public pressure on governments and the international community to fulfil their commitments to provide free, compulsory public basic education for all people, in particular for children, women and those from excluded communities.
