Keeping education on the international agenda: the Global Campaign for Education

Patrick Watt

The Global Campaign for Education was created in 1999 by four international civil-society organisations: Oxfam International, ActionAid, Education International, and the Global March Against Child Labour. At the time, each of them was launching its own advocacy campaign to improve access to education in developing countries.

Oxfam International, a confederation of development NGOs with an extensive track record of high-profile policy-influencing work, but limited experience in the education sector, launched its 'Education Now' campaign early in 1999 with a major report which highlighted the lack of progress towards the goals agreed at the World Conference on Education For All (EFA), held in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990. At that conference, more than 150 governments had promised that by the year 2000 adult illiteracy rates would be halved, and all children would enjoy the right to a good primary education. Oxfam's report called for a global financing plan to support a renewed international effort to achieve the goals of EFA. The World Bank and UNICEF gave early support to this proposal. Oxfam linked its education campaign closely to its advocacy work aiming to relieve the burden of unsustainable debt in developing countries, and also to its work on aid policy and poverty reduction.

At the same time, ActionAid, a UK-based INGO, began its own education campaign, called 'Elimu' (a Swahili word which means 'Education is Life'). Elimu focused on the establishment of national advocacy networks in developing countries, with the capacity to hold governments to account for their commitments to fund basic education. Meanwhile, Education International (EI) – a global coalition of teachers' unions – decided to focus its advocacy efforts on improving the status of teachers in developing-country education systems. In early 1999, Oxfam, ActionAid, and EI agreed to maximise the impact of their advocacy by collaborating to respond to key international influencing opportunities, especially at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000, and by adopting a number of joint 'headline' policy positions and objectives.

Out of these initial discussions, a decision was taken to establish a new 'global campaign for education', which would mobilise a broad constituency of civil-society organisations (CSOs) to press for the elimination of gender disparities in education by the year 2005 and the achievement of universal primary education by the year 2015. The three organisations planned to produce a brief 'mission statement' and agree a set of common actions, a membership structure, and communications plans. Although the plans for a global campaign were initially focused on campaigning at the Dakar forum, they were also developed with a view to creating a broad civil-society 'movement' for the longer term: a movement over which the founder members would have no direct control – similar to the model of the Jubilee debt campaign.

In order to deliver on these plans, two part-time staff based in Novib (Oxfam Netherlands) and Education International worked on a campaign framework with a steering group, consisting of staff in Oxfam, ActionAid, and EI, together with four southern NGOs – the Delhi-based Global March Against Child Labour, and national networks from Bangladesh, Brazil, and South Africa. The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) was formally launched at a meeting of these CSOs in October 1999, with the aim of expanding membership to other CSOs over the coming months. The GCE members agreed to work together initially on two major campaign activities. The first was a 'Global Week of Action' in April 2000, to raise public awareness and support for the objectives of Education For All. The initiatives included press conferences with heads of government and finance ministers, actions by GCE members – such as mailing politicians, urging them to support a global financing plan prior to the summit meeting in Dakar – and intensive media work in the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. In addition to the 'Week of Action', other activities were planned in the weeks leading up to the forum in Dakar, including writing letters to political leaders, organising seminars and conferences, and lobbying government ministers and officials. The GCE also established a website, compiled an electronic list for civil-society activists, and wrote a joint proposal, 'A Compact for Africa', which called for a concerted multilateral effort to achieve the EFA goals in the region.

The second set of major activities took place around the Dakar summit itself, later in the same month. At Dakar, several hundred NGO participants attended a preparatory conference, organised by the UNESCO Collective Consultation on NGOs in EFA and Literacy (CCNGO). Although NGOs failed in their efforts to win additional space for civil-society participation in the official meeting, some members of international NGOs (INGOs) were invited to join national delegations – that of the UK was one example – and in the course of the summit the GCE became largely accepted as a legitimate umbrella body for civil-society participants. Daily briefings, targeted lobbying of national delegations, participation in drafting the EFA framework for action, and media work ensured that the GCE had a highly visible presence at the summit, and helped to establish a new space for advocacy on education.

A new kind of civil-society partnership in education

The GCE marked a significant departure from previous civil-society advocacy work on education, which until then had mainly employed an 'insider' strategy of engaging in technical and professional discussion behind closed doors. Unlike debates on improvements in health care, water supply, or agriculture, debates on the development of education services were largely invisible to people outside the sector. Most of the civil-society groups involved in these discussions were either specialised practitioners working in complementary niches alongside government (for example, non-formal education organisations), or professional groups (for example, consultancy agencies reliant on donor-funded technical assistance)....