24 December 2017 - Today GALE published the first full overview of how European States implement the right to education for LGBTI (DESPOGI) students. About one third of the States (15) were rated as "supportive", as many were rated as "ambiguous" and slightly more (17) were scored as "denying". Peter Dankmeijer, author of the report and director of GALE comments: "It is good to see significant progress in a number of States. It shows strategic action with cooperation between NGOs, the education sector and the government works: schools can change. But the report also shows a lot remains to be done."

Overview

The report counts 412 pages. Data, opinions and feedback on the report were delivered by over 300 local respondents. The new "map" shows how Europe seems to be divided in three "bands", a band of supportive countries in the West, a band of ambiguous countries in the middle and a band of denying countries in the East. "The wider backlash in democratic values and tolerant attitudes in Eastern European countries also has its impact on education" Dankmeijer says. "Developments in education are not separate from wider social and political developments. Schools are the place where students are prepared for society, and despite all the nice international agreements about education serving human rights and democratic values, authorities may use for their current political objectives. Some authorities are fostering feelings of fear and hate, and limit objective and supportive information with censorship laws. And we see this mentality spreading to middle Europe now, even within the European Union. We have to see if the supportive countries can sustain their supportive policies or whether they will succumb to fear and intolerance as well in the longer run. There are also important roles for the European Union and the Council of Europe to stop this wave of intolerance. We will monitor this closely."

The full report can be downloaded from the GALE publication page