GALE The Global Alliance for LGBT education
November 26, 2008 - This morning, GALE intervened in a workshop of the International Conference on Education to highlight the need for collaboration between Ministries of education and LGBT civil society.
GALE was invited by the Dutch government to be part of the Dutch delegation. This gave the Alliance the opportunity to formally speak out in workshops. Peter Dankmeijer, director of GALE pointed out that the subject of the conference, ‘inclusive education’ is extremely important for non gender conforming students. He suggested governments follow the examples of the Netherlands, Brazil and South Africa to form alliances with civil society to develop effective strategies for full inclusion.
Dankmeijer thanked Mr. Mamadou NDOYE of Senegal who, in his introduction, highlighted the need for a focus on reform focused at school success and policies of Ministries of Education that need to be integrated with policies of other Ministries.
He drew the attention to the situation of students “who are not able to conform to expected male or female gender roles”.
“They are often objects of ridicule and bullying, which often remains unchallenged by school staff. We estimate this type of bullying annually results in about six millions cases of drop-out worldwide. These drop-out children often also face rejection even by their parents, and wind up having to live on the streets. They may be denied regular jobs and in such cases sometimes have to resort to prostitution to survive. In turn, they are at a huge risk of contracting and spreading HIV and other STDs.
Solving such problems is a huge challenge, because in man countries sexual diversity remains a sensitive issue and because it involves a combined approach of general gender sensitivity, social safer school policies, a targeted health policy and socially responsible police and justice policies.
It appears that these challenges can be faced best when there is an open dialogue between several government authorities, both on the national and local levels and civil society organizations.
Good examples are the Brazilian, Dutch and South African governments who have forged national alliances for this purpose, involving -among others- trade unions, professional networks, commercial companies and gay, lesbian and transgender organizations with different religious and cultural backgrounds. I could also mention more and less explicit alliances in Costa Rica, Colombia, Thailand and India.
I would advise governments to forge such alliances in their own countries. The Dutch government supports a global network, GALE (The Global Alliance for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Education) which focuses on enhancing comprehensive safer school policies including these issues. As director of this network I would be happy to connect you to members of our network to assist in such processes.”
[Picture: Mr.Vernor Muñoz Villalobos, special rapporteur on the right to education (OHCHR) chairs workshop 2d]