The Diplomat
The Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI) has officially launched for all of Ibero-America the commemorative image of its 75th anniversary, which will take place on October 26.
The anniversary will be accompanied by institutional celebrations and cultural events throughout the region, according to Mariano Jabonero, secretary general of the organization, during the presentation event, which took place this past Tuesday at the OEI headquarters in Madrid. This anniversary, he added, will reinforce the OEI “as a regional public good for all Ibero-Americans.”
The OEI, which currently has 23 member states, was founded in 1949 as the Ibero-American Education Office with the intention of creating an instrument of multilateral cooperation in the region.
In all this time, as indicated by the OEI in a press release, it has consolidated itself as “the leading organization of cooperation between Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking Ibero-American countries, with a volume of 650 projects each year on average and more than 12 million of annual beneficiaries on average in the last five years.”
Likewise, it is the Ibero-American organization with the greatest territorial presence, having 19 national offices throughout the region and a headquarters in Madrid (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Spain, Guatemala , Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Dominican Republic and Uruguay). The last of them, the Cuba office, was inaugurated in 2022.
In educational matters, the OEI has delivered more than 400,000 educational resources, has trained nearly 40,000 teachers and has served more than 450,000 students each year on average since 2019. Likewise, in response to the consequences of the pandemic, the organization has committed to designing strategies to protect the education of vulnerable groups such as early childhood, improve educational quality and promote governance, teacher development and more innovative and inclusive education in Ibero-American classrooms. Likewise, in terms of training, the OEI has helped 200,000 students through more than one hundred training programs offered by its Training Institute, launched in 2022.
In terms of science, the OEI has deployed an entire strategy to promote a shared research space for the universities of the region with its ‘Universidad Iberoamérica 2030’ program and has opted for annual publications as relevant as ‘The state of science’. It has also promoted scientific dissemination as a driving force to encourage vocations in this subject, mainly among girls and young people.
With regard to culture, the organization reaches its first three quarters of a century with a consolidated journey in promoting an Ibero-American culture cohesive in its diversity, as witnessed by the Ibero-American Cultural Charter, and with an eye toward the challenges that represents digitalization for the cultural and creative industries, with special interest in protecting the intellectual property rights of Ibero-American creators through a Chair created for this purpose.
The promotion of Spanish and Portuguese as languages of science and culture, as well as the commitment to promoting their intercomprehension, have also been some of the organization’s lines of work, which have materialized in initiatives such as the International Language Conference Portuguese and Spanish (CILPE), which has held editions in Lisbon (2019), Brasilia (2022) and Asunción (2023), or the Border Schools, a network of schools in the border territories between Spain and Portugal that promotes an education bilingual intercultural.
“Aware of the turbulent current global situation and the role of Ibero-America as a key region in aspects such as climate change, food security or migration, the Organization of Ibero-American States, through its Ibero-American Human Rights Education Program, Democracy and Equality, launched in 2022, will continue to join forces to promote the development of a more equitable region with empowered, responsible and democratic citizens,” said the OEI.
“Education, science and culture are the greatest assets that Ibero-America has to strengthen its development and integration, an objective for which we will continue to bet tirelessly from the OEI,” declared the Secretary General.
