Mexico hosts the second preparatory meeting for the Regional Conference on Higher Education Brazil 2024

• The Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) will host government representatives, rectors, students, NGOs, Higher Education unions from Latin America and the Caribbean on 5 and 6 September.
• Luciano Concheiro Bórquez, Undersecretary of Higher Education, opens the second preparatory meeting for CRES+5.
• The Director of International Relations of the Ministry of Education of Brazil-CAPES, Rui Oppermann, explained that the meeting will take place in Brasilia from 13 to 15 March 2024.
• The Director of UNESCO-IESALC, Francesc Pedró, called for an attempt to forge a consensus on the priorities that should set the agendas for the next five years.

With a view to the follow-up conference to the Regional Conference on Higher Education (CRES+5), which will take place in Brasilia from 13 to 15 March 2024, Mexico is hosting the second preparatory meeting at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) with the participation of 16 countries from Latin America and the Caribbean, where different higher education issues will be discussed.

This meeting constitutes a new instance of dialogue and interlocution between regional higher education actors that seeks active participation in the CRES+5 agenda, as well as a collective reflection on the conclusions arising from the III UNESCO World Higher Education Conference (Barcelona, Spain, 2022) that will allow for the reconfiguration of the CRES Action Plan 2018-2028.

The second preparatory meeting was attended by government representatives; rectors; university networks linked to higher education; higher education quality assurance agencies; non-governmental organisations formally established in the region; regional and international organisations linked to this type of education; teaching and non-teaching staff unions and student organisations.

Opening the meeting and welcoming the participants to our country on behalf of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Undersecretary for Higher Education of the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), Luciano Concheiro Bórquez, pointed out that this meeting will be seeking to recover a perspective of the States “from our America”, for which he acknowledged the participation of all those present.

He was confident that active participation could trigger the processes of political construction so that the educational practices of Higher Education promote the dialogue of knowledge and development with social justice as a general objective of collaboration in solidarity.

After mentioning that BUAP is an institution committed to Higher Education and society, the rector María Lilia Cedillo Ramírez underlined the relevance of the topics on the future of this type of education in Latin America and the Caribbean, which will be addressed at this meeting -COVID-19, new international geopolitics and disruptive technologies, among others-.

“It is a great meeting where the various topics to be addressed in the area of Higher Education will be put on the table, issues that concern and matter to all higher education institutions,” he added.

For his part, the Director of International Relations of the Brazilian Ministry of Education-CAPES, Rui Oppermann, explained that CRES+5 seeks to mark Brazil’s return to the Latin American and Caribbean scene as a priority that President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva has established for his entire government and which requires concrete actions.

The work is already beginning with consultants, international and governmental representatives, as well as with associations and networks of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean, he said.

Meanwhile, the director of the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO-IESALC), Francesc Pedró, thanked Mexico, the SEP and the BUAP for their hospitality in making this meeting possible, in which the most significant advances that have taken place in Latin America and the Caribbean around the themes of the Regional Conference on Higher Education 2018, held in Córdoba, Argentina, will be analysed and discussed collectively and regionally.

“The Puebla meeting is an invitation to reflect on the progress made in higher education and to try to forge a regional consensus on the priorities for the future. All are called to the debate, based on the principle of higher education as a human right and a social and public good and a duty of States. Let us then make an effort to accelerate the commitments made in 2018 in the framework of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals,” he concluded.

Author: SEP