16th World Youth and Students Festival in Venezuela: Some Action Proposals

8-6-05,9:45am



At the local level:

Encourage the creation of a common platform for Venezuela’s youth and student movement by encouraging the participation of different social, student, political, indigenous, ecumenical and other organizations.

1. Set true, participative democracy in motion, opening all spaces for discussion to all youth and student organizations. 2. Give young people greater participation in important areas. 3. Make cross-culturalism the central paradigm of Venezuela’s educational system and all philosophical, scientific, religious, artistic and political systems, with the aim of creating a multi-polar world which embodies the thought of the Liberator, Simón Bolívar.

At the international level:

1. Divulge the thought of Bolivar to raise the awareness of peoples and encourage their integration. 2. Defend public education and fight to ensure its curricula benefit the people and not transnationals. 3. Condemn Plan Colombia, the Patriot Plan, Plan Puebla Panama (PPP), the blockade against Cuba, the presence of US military bases in Latin America and all belligerent and interventionist policies that encroach upon the sovereignty of nations. 4. Support and give impetus to the struggles of indigenous people in the Americas, in defence of their rights and claims, and officially make 12 October the Day of Indigenous Resistance. 5. Commit ourselves to peoples who struggle for self-determination and to young people and leaders of student, social, ecological and other movements who struggle to defend their people from all imperialist acts of aggression. 6. Promote the form of participative democracy enshrined in the constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela as an alternative to representative democracy. 7. Promote social missions across the continent. 8. Locate Venezuela in the geo-political context of efforts to develop the continent as a whole.