Strategic Plan
january 2020- december 2022
In its 70 years of existence, OMEP became a global benchmark in defending the human rights of children from birth to 8 years old. OMEP’s work has focused on education as a right and tool for the achievement of other rights: comprehensive development, citizenship, well-being and dignity of all children around the world.
In the early 1950, in Vienna, the second World President of the OMEP Suzanne Herbiniére Lebert said: “We want early childhood everywhere to have everything they need, everything they are entitled to: protection, but also education.”
The OMEP MISSION is raised in Article 2.1 of its Constitution: to defend and promote the rights of the child with special emphasis on the right to education and care worldwide. To this end, OMEP shall help any undertaking which could promote access to quality early childhood education and care.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is the international treaty, ratified by almost
every State in the world, which recognizes the human rights of children and obliges governments to comply with them. In General Comment No. 7 (2005) the Committee on the Rights of the Child reaffirms that “Young children are right holders” and should
be applied holistically in early childhood, taking into account the principles of universality, indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights. While States have priority responsibility, civil society must also contribute to the realization of the rights of all young children, influencing and collaborating on the formulation and promotion of policies, laws, programmes, proposing knowledge-based practices, collaborating in professional training and research, articulating
local, regional and global actions focused on early childhood rights.
Since the adoption of the EDUCATION 2030 Framework for Action, OMEP is committed to its achievement, focusing on SDG4: Ensure inclusive and equitable, quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
At the current historical juncture, ECCE faces major challenges:
It is not enough to point out that early childhood is an important step, we must work together to ensure that States guarantee the universal right to quality education and care ensured by adequate and sustainable funding.
That is why OMEP advocated to include a specific Goal about early childhood: Target 4.2 By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education, is a challenge to which we are committed, but it also raises the need to perfect it and improve it in its conception and scope.
By political advocacy we mean the processes carried out by OMEP to influence public policies and resources allocation decisions within political, economic, social and institutional systems, aimed at protecting the right to ECCE.
Knowledge management involves the development of knowledge and competences within OMEP for the purpose of sharing and applying it among members and with global agencies, governments, institutions, and communities related to ECEC.
This task involves the collection, construction and dissemination of knowledge that will enable OMEP to be strengthened as scientific and pedagogical reference specialized in ECEC, which also collaborates to inform its action of political advocacy.
The Educational Area proposes to follow up in achieving the right to quality education for children in Early Childhood.
OMEP’s actions are multiple and include education and capacity building in teachers, professionals and educational agents, as well as public officials and legislators. It also offers Congresses, Seminars, Courses, Awards and Research attending to the training needs
of the different actors of the ECCE systems in different educational and social contexts.
The ORGANIZATION area includes strategies to strengthen the management of OMEP, consolidating a plural, open, democratic and participatory space, which enables its members to think, understand, dialogue, project and act.
