Comprehensive sex education: CLACSO safeguards educational content deleted from the internet by the government.

Given the intention to discontinue the comprehensive sexual education policy in Argentine education, the preservation of relevant materials was the objective that motivated the creation of the ESI Library at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO ), a digital space that gathers and safeguards the materials of Argentina's historic Comprehensive Sexual Education (ESI) Program .

It was 2006 when two laws changed the course of national education: the National Education Law and the Comprehensive Sexual Education Law . Both emerged from a context in which the State was attempting to regain its position as the primary guarantor of education.

With the National ESI Program, created following the passage of Law 26.150 in October 2006, Argentina positioned itself as a pioneer in Comprehensive Sexuality Education. It established the right of all students to receive comprehensive sexuality education and mandated that all schools include this content in their curriculum to foster responsible attitudes and prevent problems related to sexual health.

It also included biological, psychological, social, emotional, and ethical aspects of sexuality and aims to achieve equal treatment between men and women.

As political scientist Mabel Thwaites Rey points out, these regulations were created to counteract the common wisdom that had left the State as a delegitimized actor, considered inefficient and costly . But ESI, beyond its pedagogical and legal foundation, put its finger on the sore spot of a historical tension: the relationship between the State, the family, and the Church in public education.

Since the beginning of 2024, with the change in government, content produced over nearly two decades began to be removed from state platforms . Faced with this offensive, Clacso decided to host and make these documents publicly available again. Karina Batthyany , executive director of Clacso, explained the origin of this initiative in a conversation with Clarín .

"Comprehensive sexuality education is not just a question or a tool from a pedagogical perspective , but rather a commitment to deepening democracy and democratizing knowledge," he noted.

He added: "We believe that our Latin American Council of Social Sciences, as it has done on other occasions with other topics that have faced similar challenges, was a good place to host these materials, make them known, and disseminate them widely in Argentina and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean."

CLACSO's decision to host this content was a direct response to the digital depletion driven by the ruling party . But also, as Batthyany emphasizes, it was a gesture of collective resistance and care for a valuable production for the entire region.

The recovery process was complex: it involved trawling through archives housed in different spaces and reorganizing them together. Many of the materials were provided by former members of the ESI Program, who, after losing their jobs, decided to actively collaborate with this reconstruction.

"The goal was to ensure that all this accumulated knowledge would not be lost and that it could continue to be utilized , that it could continue to be leveraged within Argentina itself and in the Latin American and Caribbean region in general," Batthyány explained.

This also arose from the initiative of colleagues who had been working very hard throughout the Comprehensive Sexual Education (CSE) program. " In the face of the helplessness caused by the measures taken here to erase all traces of these materials from the internet, today we can say that we have this CSE library at CLACSO ," announced the institution's executive director.

The recovered materials include guides, booklets, audiovisual resources, and teaching proposals for all educational levels . Since their publication, they have been widely consulted around the world: "The impact has been enormous; many people have revisited documents they may have known but forgotten, and others have discovered them for the first time," Battyány said.

From a regional perspective, Argentina's experience in comprehensive sexuality education remains a beacon . "Perhaps from within the country it's not fully understood, but Argentina is an international benchmark on this topic," the director stated, emphasizing the importance of understanding CSE as a field of political, cultural, and rights-based dispute: "Educating in sexuality is educating in citizenship, in responsible relationships, in equality, and in democracy."

"Today, defending comprehensive sexuality education is almost an act of resistance," Batthyány concluded.