Salesians Work to Implement Universal Right to Education

Salesians Work to Implement
Universal Right to Education

Last week we passed the anniversary of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and annual observances related to it. For the occasion ANS posted this item on Dec. 9, the day before the anniversary:

Article 26: Everyone has a right to education
(ANS – Rome) – The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948, is now 63 years old. This magna carta of human dignity, as the document itself said, is an ideal to be achieved; it exhorts every individual and every organ of society to strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms. The Salesian Congregation is fully engaged in this.

A few days ago the Salesian Mission Office in Madrid issued a statement in which it reports that “over 67 million boys and girls do not have access to education. Of these 45% are minors living in sub-Saharan Africa. Even though in recent years governments and international organizations have made efforts to ensure that primary education is universal, there is still much work to be done. If the present situation continues, in 2015 there will be over 50 million youngsters not going to school, and so the second Millennium Goal will not be reached.”

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, “Everyone has a right to education,” but in the world over 125 million young people between 14 and 25 years of age do not know how to read and write.

Educating the young does not mean simply instructing them, but providing an integral development of the person that takes into account all the aspects of human life, from its beginning to its end. The Congregation and the Salesian Family are responding to this on a daily basis, fostering in every corner of the world an education inspired by the values of the Gospel and the charism of Don Bosco.

In January 2009 there was an international congress at the Salesianum in Rome, “The Preventive System and Human Rights,” promoted by the SDB Youth Ministry Department in collaboration with International Volunteers for Development (VIS). Religious and lay people from over 130 countries in which they are working met together and shared experiences and projects responding to the challenges of the educational emergency and the needs of the young.