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Distr.GENERAL E/CN.4/2003/9/Add.2 21 January 2003 Original: ENGLISH |
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Report submitted by Katarina Tomaševski, Special Rapporteur,
Addendum Mission to the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) 24 November - 1 December 20021
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Executive summary [ Go to Contents ] The Special Rapporteur visited the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) from 24 November to 1 December 2002 with the aim of examining in situ the human rights dimensions of education, at a time when normative and institutional framework that will govern post-conflict society was being developed. The suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive at the time of her mission inevitably affected its nature and scope. The Special Rapporteur's visit thus took place in unusual circumstances. Her meetings were official and unofficial, public and private, on and off the record. The meetings and subsequent comments on her draft report encompassed a variety of actors with an even greater variety of views on the human rights dimensions of education. Education has been profoundly affected by three decades of conflict and by Northern Ireland's self-image of a deeply divided society. Indivisibility of human rights is epitomized in problems lying at the intersection between school and society. Sectarian harassment and social exclusion victimize schoolchildren and their teachers. Solutions highlight government human rights obligations to create the conditions necessary for the enjoyment of the right to education, without obstacles of harassment or violence, social exclusion or the underlying prejudice. The Special Rapporteur has focused on the potential of education to overcome societal divisions through the ideal of all-inclusive schooling. Since the right to education encompasses civil and political as well as economic, social and cultural components, and is the passkey for the enjoyment of all human rights, human-rights mainstreaming could facilitate the ongoing process of reforming post-primary education. Issues such as teenage pregnancy or working children illustrate the advantage of the human rights approach in addressing multi-layered discrimination. The process of integrating human rights in the numerous ongoing education reforms necessitates forging a blueprint that clearly articulates shared goals and underlying values. The Special Rapporteur has highlighted key parameters, exclusion versus inclusion, segregation versus integration, and inequality versus equality. As comparative experiences shows, rights-based education can contribute to remedying and preventing conflict and violence when designed to do so, including by tackling the underlying causes. Introduction [ Go to Contents ] 1. The Special Rapporteur visited the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) from 24 November to 1 December 2002 with the aim of examining in situ the human rights dimensions of education. The suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive at the time of her mission inevitably coloured it. The Special Rapporteur had extensive correspondence with the relevant authorities regarding a variety of issues for which she had been approached. These ranged from street demonstrations preventing children's access to school to the human rights dimensions of reforming post-primary education. Subsequent to her private visit to Belfast in May 2002, the correspondence continued, and on 8 October 2002, the First and Deputy First Minister invited the Special Rapporteur to visit Northern Ireland. On 14 October 2002, the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive were suspended. The Special Rapporteur proceeded with preparations for her visit, adjusting them and the visit itself to changing circumstances. 2. Thus, the Special Rapporteur's visit to Northern Ireland took place in unusual circumstances. Her meetings were official and unofficial, public and private, on and off the record, and encompassed a variety of actors with an even greater variety of views on the human rights dimensions of education. The Special Rapporteur had meetings at the Northern Ireland Office, including with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Des Browne. A planned meeting with the Minister with responsibility for education, Jane Kennedy, unfortunately could not take place due to force majeure. She had private meetings with the (currently suspended) First and Deputy First Minister and the Minister for Education. Her schedule included meetings with officials of the Department of Education, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Equality Commission. The Special Rapporteur would like to thank the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission for help with her visit, and to numerous academics working on and in education, especially to Laura Lundy for sharing her expertise on education law. She had a joint meeting with leaders of the Irish National Teachers' Organization and the Ulster Teachers' Union, met non-governmental organizations, representatives of political parties, movements for integrated and Irish-medium education, teachers, pupils and their parents, and visited schools. 3. The circumstances of her visit, aggravated by the constraints of time and space, imposed upon the Special Rapporteur the necessity to abandon issues she would have otherwise addressed, such as denominational schools, education for children deprived of their liberty, or suspensions and expulsions from school. The 20-page maximum length for this report has imposed additional, unwelcome but inevitable limitations. A partial exoneration is the report on her mission to England in October 1999, which discusses the legal framework, which is much the same, and analyses many similar problems 2 . Moreover, the existing literature is vast: "in proportion to size, Northern Ireland is the most heavily researched area on earth," 3 and the Special Rapporteur has provided as many references as the space allowed. The immense interest for discussing the integration of human rights in education has been reflected in numerous comments which the Special Rapporteur has received on her draft report, which she circulated as widely as she could. To remedy the time constraints, she returned to Belfast on 9 and 10 January 2003 on a private visit to provide an opportunity for further comments and additional input. I.THE CONTEXT [ Go to Contents ] 4.The most frequent self-description that a visitor encounters points out that Northern Ireland is emerging from three decades of conflict (which some trace back to the twelfth century), and is a deeply divided society. Both facets have profoundly affected education. 5. Boundaries are marked by physical barriers between neighbourhoods called "peace lines." Their explicit purpose - to prevent conflict - has implicitly defined the absence of contact between neighbours as a prerequisite for peace. The political cultures in Northern Ireland are intensely visual and boundaries are reinforced through the painting of kerb-stones, the hanging of flags, and the painting of murals. Far-away conflicts are used to reinforce division, and Belfast may have seen more Palestinian and Israeli flags than any other place in the world. Many murals glorify political violence. Huge, dark, intimidating graffiti depicts hooded, heavily armed men and their political messages. 4 Studies into the pattern of political violence have identified the dominantly male face of both perpetrators and victims, with death rates starting at 12 and peaking at 19. 5 The Special Rapporteur recommends a gender analysis of the contents of in-school and out-of-school education, especially concerning the role of political violence and political governance in the contemporary history of Northern Ireland. 6.Boundaries were - and are - expressed through the choice of language. Binary terms such as Ulster/Six Counties, the Republic/Éire, Mainland/Britain, Derry/Londonderry are widespread. The 1998 Agreement is called alternatively the Good Friday and the Belfast Agreement. Children learn the words before they can understand their implications. 7. The frequency with which visitors to Northern Ireland are told that society is deeply divided prompts asking how this is done. For outsiders, this is impossible because people look alike and speak alike. 6 Explanations follow, listing the school one attended among the key identifiers. Parental choice to help their children "be individuals, not be categorized" 7 is circumscribed by the insufficient capacity of integrated schools, whose intake is merely 5 per cent of the school children. It is an immensely positive sign that the demand for integrated schools exceeds their supply, but an equally worrisome sign that government support lags behind the popular demand. That demand reflects a widely shared priority for diminishing the coinciding religious, residential and political boundaries. The objective of buttressing peace-building through all-inclusive education, in the best interests of children, could, in the Special Rapporteur's view, represent an attractive vision of the future. |
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A.Transition to peace-building [ Go to Contents ] 8. Transition from conflict to peace-building was formally launched by the 1998 Agreement(s) 8 .The implementing 1998 Northern Ireland Act 9 followed, whereupon the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive started in December 1999. Devolution has been halted several times, including during the Special Rapporteur's visit. Each suspension, including this most recent one, has been accompanied by reiterating the 1998 Agreement's pledges. The Agreement has, however, outlined different blueprints for the future. 9.Power-sharing on the basis of the d'Hondt electoral model divided executive functions amongst the political parties with the largest number of seats. Education was particularly affected when Martin McGuinness, then Sinn Féin's chief negotiator, became the Minister for Education. That appointment "generated political shock waves," 10 and "in addition to a flood of letters to the local papers objecting in strong terms to the placing of children's development in the hands of a person with connections to paramilitaries, in several schools pupils walked out of classes in protest." 11 Furthermore, key decisions should be taken on a cross-community basis.Thus, pledges such as promoting integrated education, ensuring freedom from sectarian harassment, or remedying the political underrepresentation of women have not attained priority. 10.Sources of law are many. Vertically, they are global, regional and domestic. The many global human rights treaties trigger uncertainty due to the views of the Government of the United Kingdom regarding the Convention on the Rights of the Child or the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, deemed by the United Kingdom to constitute "principles and programmatic objectives rather than legal obligations." 12 European Community law is directly applicable as is the European Convention on Human Rights. Domestic sources of law include those applied throughout the United Kingdom and those specific to Northern Ireland. The process of implementing the 1998 Agreement included devolution of some powers to the currently suspended Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive, retention of others for Westminster. 11. In addition, the institutional infrastructure that has evolved in the area of human rights also includes different governmental and public bodies. The Human Rights Commission and the Equality Commission, both established in 1999, 13 are to be followed by a Children's Commissioner. Education pertains to the remit of all three institutions. In an ideal scenario, they might be able to delineate their respective areas and jointly tackle overarching issues. The experience in countries with multiple institutions is fragmentation and duplication, less done at a higher cost. The parallel drafts of a Bill of Rights and a Single Equality Bill raise the obvious question: why not an Equal Rights Bill? At the global and regional level, the United Nations and the Council of Europe have followed a fragmented human rights agenda, separating civil and political from economic, social and cultural rights, and adding later the rights of the child. By contrast, the International Labour Organization and the European Union have opted for an integrated approach. The support for the Children's Commissioner has demonstrated the unifying potential of the rights of the child and a similar potential might be generated for an integrated approach to human rights. B.Suspended devolution [ Go to Contents ] 12.The suspension of devolution has entailed reimposing direct rule and was accompanied by numerous calls for transition from violence. Violence has been diminished, but neither halted nor prevented. The most recent suspension of the Assembly and Executive was preceded by the police raiding Sinn Féin offices in the Stormont parliament building, arresting an official for possession of documents likely to be of use to terrorists. 13. The basic arrangements agreed in 1998 focused on short-term governance, cloaking under a veil of official silence wounds that are still raw and accountability for inflicting them. For many atrocities responsibility was admitted by their perpetrators. Their account has been accepted by some, rejected by others, but accountability has not followed. Human rights are defined as forward-looking, addressing the future, not the past. A firm dividing line between the past and future has yet to be defined. Explaining to schoolchildren the principles of human rights against this background must be difficult, if not impossible: When does the past characterized by impunity end, for the future founded upon human rights to begin? 14. The 1998 Agreement was hailed as the global precedent in mentioning children in peacemaking. 14 Despite promises to future generations in the 1998 Agreement and the fact that children below 16 represent 23.6 per cent of the population, 15 there is, as yet, no long-term vision of Northern Ireland in 10 or 20 years to guide the design of education. The plea of the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) for "an agreed vision of what is taught in our schools" 16 resonates widely. II.INTERFACE BETWEEN SCHOOL AND SOCIETY [ Go to Contents ] 15. In Northern Ireland, "interface" is commonly defined as the boundary between neighbourhoods, denoted as Catholic and Protestant. Residential segregation is particularly and painfully visible in working class urban areas. Deprivation that fuels hostility and violence 17 heightens the importance of school. Research has shown that "the majority of schools viewed their role as providing a preserve of normality for pupils as well as support for their pupils educationally in the context of the political situation." 18 16. The transition from "long-standing low-intensity conflict" 19 necessitates an appraisal of the existing net of protection for schools and schoolchildren so as to fill the substantive gaps in it. The right to education extends far beyond mere provision of education services. The corresponding government obligations include creating conditions necessary for the enjoyment of the right to education, human rights in education and through education so as to overcome the limitations of what the school, alone, can do to shield children from sectarian harassment or societal prejudice. 1.Holy Cross Girls' School [ Go to Contents ] 17. During the first ten days of September 2001, front pages of major newspapers carried photographs of terrified and tearful schoolgirls being walked through an adult cordon to their school. One part of that adult cordon was hurling abuse at them, the other trying to shield them. International publicity halted on 11 September 2001, when the media switched to terrorism. Beforehand, the vast publicity had been part of both micro- and macro-politics. On the micro level, the targeting of the Holy Cross School epitomized the price of residential and educational segregation and the associated appropriation of public space. Publicising child abuse should have raised ethical issues, but these were relegated to the margins. Questions about the rights of the victimized schoolgirls have remained unanswered. The principal and her staff have done their best for the girls and, at the time of the Special Rapporteur's visit on 29 November 2002, they were happily rehearsing for their Christmas play. And yet, their victimization has left scars that the school alone cannot heal. The school's principal, Anne Tanney, prioritizes the rights of the child in coping with the victimization of her pupils, which occurred again in January 2003. Indeed, schools should not be left to themselves to protect children from the impact of sectarian harassment, with only some additional funding and security. The Special Rapporteur recommends urgent development of effective safeguards to prevent victimization of schoolchildren and an accountability mechanism for immediate redress of any victimization that might occur. 18. The facts are both simple and complex. Holy Cross School is on top of a small hill, the road leading to it was blocked by demonstrators to prevent parents from taking their daughters to school and back home. Two residentially and educationally segregated neighbourhoods, both experiencing deprivation, provide the background. Protesters blocked the passage to school trying to exclude "the other" from "their" neighbourhood. The parents insisted on taking their daughters to school by the road claimed as theirs by "the other". The trigger had been an incident that nobody is quite sure about. The cause was frustration and hostility, vented through the means epitomized in an indigenously created "right to parade or protest," 20 contrasted against a "freedom from sectarian harassment" promised in the 1998 Agreement. The legal safeguards for schoolchildren are strong, reaching back to the prohibition of attacks on schools and schoolchildren in 1863 and to the inclusion of intentional attacks on educational institutions in the list of war crimes in the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court. 21 The merger between criminal, human rights and humanitarian law which this development has put in place, and the emphasis on individual criminal responsibility, provide foundations for ensuring that those who deliberately target schoolchildren are held accountable and do not benefit in any possible way from such actions. The Special Rapporteur recommends an immediate clarification of the legal framework protecting schoolchildren and schools, especially from sectarian harassment. 2.St Mary's School [ Go to Contents ] 19. The 2000 Report on Racial Prejudice has found racist prejudice twice as likely as sectarian. 22 Travellers are a small community, a mere 0.1 per cent of the population. 23 They are victimized by multi-layered discrimination, similar to England, 24 which is exacerbated by prejudice expressed as "the Travellers bring trouble" or "Travellers are trouble." 25 Their nomadic lifestyle and the tradition of self-employment have not yet been integrated in modelling education. Their "educational underachievement" is documented by a vast array of statistics, with a rare mention that it results from their having been in fact, if not in law, excluded from education for a long time. 20. Previous policies were criticised for "building better ghettos, not implementing human rights." 26 In Belfast, one of the most visible manifestations of segregation was St. Patrick's (1968-1980) and then St. Paul's School for Travelling Children (1980-2000). The Special Rapporteur visited the successor, St. Mary's School, attended only by Traveller children at the time of her visit, although open to all children. The principal, Paul Coulter, and his staff have accomplished a great deal in creating an attractive school, increasing the pupil-teacher ratio, improving the children's attendance and learning accomplishments, translating the principle of the best interests of children into practice. There is too little recognition he and his staff have obtained for their efforts and accomplishments. Indeed, the Special Rapporteur has heard suggestions that the school be closed as only Traveller children attend it. Enrolling non-Traveller children is beyond the remit of the school since parental choice reigns. Teachers and schools cannot overcome social exclusion on their own. The Special Rapporteur recommends urgent revision of a ten-year-old policy on Travellers' education. III. ONGOING POST-PRIMARY REFORM [ Go to Contents ] 21. Secondary education is proverbially the weakest link in the process that is today expected to extend to lifelong education, and Northern Ireland exemplifies this. The ongoing process of reforming post-primary education has generated immense debate and widely diverging proposals. 27 22. Since compulsory education ends at the age of 16, one might think logical a division at the post-compulsory rather than post-primary stage. Being compulsory, education triggers the coercive powers of the State and thereby heightened human rights safeguards, especially entitlements regarding the quality and contents of education. Northern Ireland has, however, preserved segregation at the age of 11, following what is known as the 11+ transfer test, previously used throughout the United Kingdom. 28 The transfer test takes two hours and covers only English, mathematics, and science. The two-thirds of the children who do not perform well enough to qualify for a grammar school tend to perceive themselves as educational failures, relegated to inferior schools: "the smart people go to really good schools and the not so smart people go to the not so smart schools" 29 The ongoing debate has tended towards a narrow focus; some have argued against selection, others have initiated campaigns to preserve the grammar school. Two English models, grammar and comprehensive school, have become a frequent point of reference. For example, Sinn Féin is opposed to "the selective, elitist 'ethos' of the grammar school," 30 while the Ulster Unionist Party opposes changes that might "compromise Northern Ireland's enviable record of examination success." 31 A. Teenage pregnancy [ Go to Contents ] 23.The post-primary review has excluded gender, 32 although the phenomenon of teenage pregnancy illustrated the importance that gender should have attained. Sex education is unregulated in Northern Ireland, and it would be difficult to imagine an obligation to provide schoolchildren with the information they need to make informed and responsible choices through the existing law-making process. The United Kingdom has the highest teenage birth rate in the European Union, called by the Prime Minister a "shameful record." 33 It is five times as high as in Sweden or the Netherlands. 34 EU members with high and low teenage pregnancy also exhibit different upper secondary school enrolments, 73 per cent in the United Kingdom and above 85 per cent in the Netherlands and Sweden. 35 24. Empowering girls to exercise choice requires means, defined by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission as everyone's right to "education relating to sexual and reproductive matters at all levels." 36 Their motivation is even more important, especially expectations of good quality education and matching career prospects. These are thwarted by disadvantages, exemplified by the unemployment rate of 29.45 per cent among girls and women aged 16 to 64. 37 B. Working children [ Go to Contents ] [ Go to Page Top ] [ Go to Document Top ] [ Go To Next Page ---» ] |