| Gap between promise and performance The key requirement of the right to education - making primary education free, compulsory and all-encompassing - has not been translated into reality. Because there is no global monitoring system, we do not know how many children in how many countries have no access to primary education, nor indeed whether the situation is improving or deteriorating. The vast majority of countries whose children have no access to school are poor, many are heavily indebted, some are at war or warfare has recently ended. Thus, this list raises questions about international cooperation much as about individual governments. This overview is the first step towards monitoring incomplete accomplishments in making primary education compulsory and free of charge. The obvious beginning has been to review the state of realization of the right to primary education, which is uniformly and unconditionally guaranteed under all international human rights treaties. The path towards attaining world-wide coverage is long and uphill because availability of data is correlated with access to school - where there is no schooling, data documenting this also tends to be lacking. This overview lists 58 countries in which primary school is not free, or it is not compulsory, or it is neither free nor compulsory. Information has been collected from reports of the respective governments under human rights treaties, reports by the respective ministries of education to international conferences on education, documentation by international agencies working in or with these countries, or - if there has been no other source available - academic literature or investigative journalism have been used if verification has been possible through interviews. The sources are indicated for every item included in this overview and all corrections, updates, or supplementary information will be welcome. This overview uses French and Spanish alongside English so as to retain self-descriptions by the respective governments in their original languages instead of unofficial translations. If this impedes using this overview, unofficial translations will be provided alongside the original statements. |
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| Updated: 15 January 2002 |