Specialists at the Ibero-American Inter-Governmental Cooperation Network for People with Special Educational Needs (RIINEE) made a number of significant decisions, including the renovation of the work of the Regional Education Information System for Students with Disabilities (SIRIED) and continuing with the exchange of knowledge and technical assistance, at the 14th in this series of symposiums, held during late November in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia.

The network agreed to form a working team to review SIRIED information mechanisms, together with a possible pilot initiative to be conducted in El Salvador, Peru, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.

The event was organized by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, OREALC/UNESCO Santiago, and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, and was attended by delegations from education ministries and departments from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Spain, and Uruguay, as well as experts from the Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE).

Other initiatives

During the seminar, participants expressed their commitment to implementing the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in all countries, as specified in the Education 2030 Agenda. They also agreed on the need for a paradigm shift and the renovation of organizational and practical education structures at education centres.

The network made a decision to continue with current strenuous efforts to transform education systems and schools so as to make them inclusive. This work will continue to be conducted in the Education 2030 Agenda implementation framework, together with the Buenos Aires Declaration, which was adopted by the ministries of education of Latin America and the Caribbean (2017) and the corresponding regional Road Map.

In this area, the network’s members agreed to create strategies and spaces to position and build RIINEE into policy, as part of the Education 2030 Agenda Regional Road Map, and to implement regional accountability and awareness strategies for RIINEE’s activities. The countries also agreed to build strategies to enhance the universalisation of education services, from early childhood through to lifelong learning, for people with disabilities.

“This is the best possible scenario for undertaking the new projects that we are going to implement in each of our countries. We are all under an obligation to implement public policies based on a participatory perspective that meets the needs of the citizenry”, said Marco Aurelio Rando Rando, Director General of Territorial Cooperation and Evaluation at the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport.

OREALC/UNESCO Santiago Interim Director Cecilia Barbieri welcomed the network’s new working body: “Inclusivity specialists from many Latin American countries have now been meeting for the past thirteen years to enrich their work and join forces to advance towards ever greater inclusivity. These events are particularly valuable as a unique forum for the people who design and implement inclusivity programmes and policies to share their knowledge and best practices, and agree on shared ways forward for this region of the world.”

Members of the network took this opportunity to make a number of decisions, including the topics to be covered at the network’s next event, which will cover universal design for learning goals. RIINEE will release a publication on the results of the latest meeting before the next event takes place.

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The RIINEE Network is made up of inclusivity and special education departments at the education ministries and departments of Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile, Paraguay, Ecuador, Uruguay, Nicaragua, Honduras, Cuba, Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and El Salvador