The Human Rights Network for Boys, Girls and Adolescents (Redhnna), Excubitus Human Rights Education, and the Human Kaleidoscope promoted an open letter under the title “The COVID-19 pandemic, the school year, and distance education” to warn of the urgent need to care for and protect children and adolescents in the current context and monitor their learning processes carry on in a proper environment. The communication was addressed to the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of the Presidential Office and Monitoring of Government Management, the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents (IDENNA), the Permanent Commissions for Integral Social and Family Development, the National Assembly, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) – Education Cluster, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The letter received the support of 150 mothers, fathers, educators, journalists, health workers, and other sectors, as well as 72 civil society organizations that share the concern about the different challenges and difficulties that Venezuelan children and adolescents must face amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the Complex Humanitarian Emergency denounced for 5 years now, only to be repeatedly denied by the State, who shows no capacity or willingness to deal with the economic and social crisis impacting the enjoyment of rights of all its citizens.
The signatories affirm that the current conditions of the education system make it impossible to ensure equal access, permanence, quality, and pursuit to children and adolescents, nor provide tools to their families and teachers to adequately guide them in the learning process.
Finally, the document presents a proposal for a social and economic protection plan that includes improving the supply of public goods and services according to the country’s territorial realities, as well as based on the extensive and massive use of open-air radio and television stations to broadcast quality content that allows the design of strategies to facilitates remote learning, without ignoring the reality of children who are not formally schooled or have dropped out of the education system.
You can read the complete letter in Spanish HERE.
