The article reports experiences and presents results of a set of investigations that aim to analyze repercussions and similarities between the content proposed by the UNESCO to education for democracy in its interpretation of international human rights law; and bills on the subject, within the scope of basic education, presented at the Chamber of Deputies and Legislative Assembly of São Paulo (second half of 2015 and 2016) and at the Municipality of Campinas from 2014 to 2018. This, in the context in which UNESCO directs its debate to education for global citizenship. In Brazil, the constitutional objective of promoting democratic citizenship, taken up in the National Education Plan from 2014, was opposed to the advance of authoritarian conservatism. It culminated in the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. On the other hand, in the praxis of relationship between education and democracy, there was the secondary student mobilization with the occupation of schools between 2015 and 2016. The investigations used empirical documentary research on the acting of the Legislative Power, content analysis and bibliographic review. The results and conclusions are: the almost absence of references to UNESCO and its programs in the bills; the identification of approximations – not repercussions – between the reformist proposals of the UNESCO, with their generic language, and the themes of the bills; the identification of repercussions of the conservative wave, in bills that seek the rescue of “patriotic” citizenship and the fight against the “ideological indoctrination” and the “gender ideology”.