This question can have many answers. Below we have chosen to present four wide-ranging ones, with which we will try to summarise the main social and didactic reasons behind the choice to address this issue in schools.
- International inequalities profoundly influence the possibilities of access to a dignified life. Being born by chance in an African country rather than in a North American country causes average differences in income and access to rights now even wider than they were in the past between the aristocracy and the peasant class.
- International inequalities are so wide and have such an increasing trend (especially if we compare the richest minorities and poorest majorities on the planet) that their effects have created and will create great tensions in many areas of the globe.
- Although measured mainly in economic terms, international inequalities are a highly interdisciplinary issue and provide the key to understand other global phenomena of great importance: intercontinental migration, the different impact of climate change in various areas of the world, the geography of hunger, imbalances in terms of access to education and health ...
- Despite being a major problem, international inequalities are a little-known and debated issue. Knowledge of their causes, nature and effects is the first step towards a cultural change that brings the problem to the attention of the international community. School is one of the places where this change can take place.