The Diplomat
The Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI) has approved its Program-Budget 2023-2024, a roadmap for the next two years that will focus, above all, on the digital transformation of education, academic mobility or the regional promotion of human rights, democracy and equality.
The program was approved on December 19 during the LXXIX ordinary meeting of the OEI’s Governing Board, held at the organization’s headquarters in Madrid and attended by videoconference with the participation of the delegations of the Ministries of Education of the 23 Ibero-American countries. The Governing Board is the body delegated by the General Assembly to oversee the government and administration of the OEI.
Under the presidency of the Minister of Education of the Dominican Republic, Ángel Hernández, the Governing Board approved the Program-Budget 2023-2024, which focuses, above all, on the consolidation of the digital transformation of Ibero-American education, the formation of a shared space for academic mobility and the implementation of an ambitious regional program on human rights, democracy and equality.
“This Program-Budget is a continuity of the previous one, which shows that the objectives have been met and that we are aiming at the strategies that suit the region, but it is updated with a structure in missionary and strategic axes that give more order and clarity to our work,” said the Secretary General of the OEI, Mariano Jabonero, re-elected to the position during the last XIV General Assembly of this organization, held in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) on November 25.
For his part, Minister Hernández, from the OEI’s headquarters in Madrid, highlighted the good budgetary health of the organization, as evidenced in the Program-Budget. He also handed over the presidency of the Governing Board to his Argentine counterpart, Jaime Perczyk, who will take office on January 1.
During the meeting, and at the proposal of Mariano Jabonero, the Governing Board awarded the OEI Medal of Honor to the Mexican diplomat and former Executive Secretary of ECLAC, Alicia Bárcena, for “the mark she has left on the development process of the countries of the region through her excellent work at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)”, and to the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, for his “tenacity in strengthening cooperation among Ibero-American countries in the fields of education, science, technology and culture in the context of integral development, democracy and regional integration.
