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Distr.GENERAL E/CN.4/2004/45/Add.2/Corr.1 30 March 2004 English Original:Spanish |
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The right to education Report submitted by the Special Rapporteur, Katarina Tomasevski Addendum * MISSION TO COLOMBIA (1-10 October 2003) Summary [ Go to Contents ] The purpose of the mission of the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, from 1 to 10 October 2003, was to investigate in situ the situation of the right to education in Colombia. Obviously, 40 years without peace necessitate assessing the impact of the conflict on the right to education. The Special Rapporteur visited Bogotá and Quibdó (Chocó). She also met with the Vice-President, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Education, the Deputy Minister of Justice, the Chief Justice and other justices of the Constitutional Court, the Ombudsman and the Presidential Advisory Office on Gender Equality. She also visited the Ministry of Social Protection and the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF). Additionally, she had meetings with international organizations working in the field of human rights and education in Colombia, the Colombian Federation of Education Workers (FECODE), the Educación Compromiso de Todos team, human rights defenders, women's organizations, representatives of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, representatives of displaced populations, and associations of university teaching staff and students. The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Colombian State confirm, immediately and explicitly, the binding force of its international human rights obligations. That compulsory education should be free is a key requirement of international human rights law. Colombia ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1968, but 36 years later primary education is neither free nor all-encompassing. The Special Rapporteur recommends an increase of 30 per cent in the budgetary allocation for education, from 4 to 6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). The dearth of up-to-date, disaggregated statistics on all exclusion criteria makes it hard to gauge the number and profile of the children whose right to education is still being denied. In addition, discrimination, with the exception of sex discrimination, continues to go unrecorded. The Special Rapporteur recommends that an up-to-date profile of educational exclusion be drawn up with a view to taking the necessary steps to bring about full inclusion as soon as possible. Ensuring that education is free necessitates a detailed breakdown of the costs borne by pupils for whom education should be free but is not, and the Special Rapporteur recommends a study of current costs with a view to eliminating them. The significance of a human rights-based strategy is that it links together all human rights and transforms education into a vehicle for the enjoyment of those rights. The State's international human rights obligations require all State actors to incorporate human rights into their strategies, policies and actions and all branches of the public authorities to converge towards that end. Colombia lacks an education strategy based on human rights, and the Special Rapporteur recommends that the impact of the "education revolution" on the right to education be assessed and a commitment be made to strengthening the protection of economic,social and cultural rights. The coexistence of public and private education, regulated by public and private law respectively, requires a clear and explicit demarcation of the scope of these two different systems of education. The Special Rapporteur recommends insulation of the school from the conflict; schools should be designated and protected as "zones of peace". The right to education cannot be imagined without the protection of the human, professional, trade union and academic rights of teachers. The Special Rapporteur recommends immediate measures to remedy the absence of their protection in Colombia. Annex REPORT OF THE SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION ON HER MISSION TO COLOMBIA (1-10 OCTOBER 2003)
Introduction [ Go to Contents ] 1. On 21 October 2002 the Special Rapporteur on the right to education asked to be formally invited to visit Colombia. In her letter she stated that the purpose of her visit would be to study and assess the exercise of the right to education in Colombia and its interpretation and implementation in practice. The Colombian Government sent her a written invitation on 19 July 2003, suggesting October as a convenient time to visit. 2. The purpose of the Special Rapporteur's mission from 1 to 10 October 2003 was to investigate in situ the right to education. She visited Bogotá and Quibdó (Chocó). She also met with the Vice-President, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Education, the Deputy Minister of Justice, the Chief Justice and other justices of the Constitutional Court, the Ombudsman and the Presidential Advisory Office on Gender Equality. She also visited the Ministry of Social Protection and the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF). Additionally, she had meetings with international organizations working in the field of human rights and education in Colombia, FECODE, the Educación Compromiso de Todos team, human rights defenders, women's organizations, representatives of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, representatives of displaced populations, and associations of university teachers and students. During her visit, the Special Rapporteur received a large number of cases of violations of the right to education and of human rights in education. She talked with teachers who had been threatened or raped, parents unable to pay for their children's education - which should be free but is not - and university students who have been threatened on account of their human rights work. 3. The Special Rapporteur wishes to extend her profound gratitude to the Colombian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bogotá for the excellent logistical support that it provided before and during the visit, and to the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ) for preparing and coordinating the programme of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). She further wishes to record her anti-acknowledgment regarding the obstacles and difficulties that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva placed in her way before and during her mission. 4. This report contains an analysis of the key problems affecting the affirmation and realization of the right to education in Colombia and reviews the political, economic and fiscal measures taken by the Colombian Government. It also contains recommendations intended to ensure that the Government's policies and actions take account of all relevant aspects of the right to education. The recommendations are highlighted in bold type. Even so, in the space of 20 pages it is impossible to convey the complexity and subtleties of the Colombian context, especially against the backdrop of 40 years of conflict. 5. As always, the Special Rapporteur uses the 4-A scheme in her work as the analytical framework for government human rights obligations stemming from the right to education.1 Governments are obliged to ensure that education is Available, Accessible, Acceptable and Adaptable. The Special Rapporteur was especially pleased to see that the 4-A scheme is used in Colombia,2 and so there is no need to explain it in this report. I. CONTEXT: "THE RIGHT TO HAVE RIGHTS" 3 [ Go to Contents ] 6. The Special Rapporteur's visit took place at a crucial time for the future of human rights in Colombia. One teacher asked the Special Rapporteur how teachers could be expected to teach human rights when the Government itself defined them as something suspect and subversive. This problem was highlighted by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on human rights defenders, who deplored the fact that "the defence of human rights is considered to be a subversive political activity and that human rights NGOs are stigmatized" (E/CN.4/2002/106/Add.2, para. 89). On 29 September 2003 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asked the Colombian Government to take the necessary steps to clarify its policy on human rights. An illustrative example of the need for safeguards against stigmatization have been the words of President Uribe himself: "I see respectable human rights organizations […] and I also see certain writers and politicos who ultimately further the ends of terrorism and take cowardly refuge behind the banner of human rights." 4 At the same time, donors have expressed their support for human rights defenders and requested the Government to offer them better protection.5 The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) stressed that Government statements and actions "reflect what has been termed a 'pedagogical thrust', i.e. they provide for all sorts of the learning embodied in the creation of citizenship". 6 The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government make an immediate and explicit commitment to defend and protect human rights defenders. 7. Colombia's normative framework, which is founded on the principles of a Social State governed by the rule of law, is highly developed, and the work of the Constitutional Court is impressive. Despite this normative framework, there remains a wide gulf between formal guarantees and reality. This gap between words and deeds was expressed by President Uribe, who described Colombia as a legalistic but lawless State7. 8. It is important to remember that the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that human rights "should be protected by the rule of law". But the right to education is not afforded such protection in Colombia. For example, the Government's education strategy, known as the "education revolution", makes no mention of the right to education; it refers, instead, to "democratic access" to education. In addition, the National Development Plan 2002-2006 (Act No. 812/2003) proposed a "judicial reform". The Government's proposal restricts access to remedies in respect of economic, social and cultural rights. The approval of this Plan would constitute retrogression in terms of their justiciability. Thus far, Colombia has had a progressive jurisprudence on the right to education, confirming the principle that judicial protection is the most advanced stage of human rights protection. The planned constitutional reform and reform of the administration of justice aim to eliminate judicial protection of economic, social and cultural rights, thereby doing away with the very "the right to have the right to education".8 Colombian law already does not recognize the right of adults to education, 9 notwithstanding its affirmation as a universal human right and despite the international obligations undertaken by the Colombian State in this regard. If children's right to education is not judicially protected, they will be left without an effective safeguard. In the vast majority of cases concerning the absence of available and accessible schooling for children of school age, which constitute violations of the right to education, nobody is held responsible. Judicial protection remains an effective - in fact the only - effective remedy. On 30 July 2003 the Constitutional Court registered its "profound and complete disagreement" with the proposed constitutional reform. The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Colombian State confirm, immediately and explicitly, that its international human rights obligations are binding, and that it commit itself to strengthening judicial protection of economic, social and cultural rights. 9. As the proportion of poor Colombians returned to its 1988 level, according to the Colombia Poverty Report published in May 2002, and the World Bank noted that greater stability requires "the creation of opportunities for all Colombians"10, the Special Rapporteur believes it is important to strengthen the protection of economic and social rights. It is the task of the Special Rapporteur to emphasize the absence of the right to education in the Development Plan. She recommends that government policy should be analysed and evaluated by the yardstick of international human rights law with a view to adjusting all government strategies and policies to the right to education. II. EDUCATIONAL DYSFUNCTION [ Go to Contents ] 10. The dual status of education in Colombian legislation - public and private, free and for-fee - has created a good deal of confusion. Moreover, the Government's education policies weaken the right to education because the bare minimum - free and compulsory public education for school-aged children - is not guaranteed. The Special Rapporteur deems it important to emphasize, as she does in every annual report, the difference between education as a commodity and education as a human right. Broadening the sale and purchase of education can improve education statistics, but as access is governed by the ability to pay, education does not exist as a human right. The recent trend towards privatization jeopardizes education as a public good and schooling as a public service. The protests demanding altered Government policies and actions to preserve public services have exposed the absence of Government policy and practice aimed at guaranteeing the right to education and protecting human rights in education, contrary to the requirements of the existing law. 11. The economic reforms, known as "sweat and tears", have posed new challenges for human rights defenders because the Government's economic policy contains no proposals to safeguard the right to education. The rejected referendum of 25 October 2003 had included three proposals regarding the financing of education. Two of them sought to increase resources for education through savings and revenue grants, while the third proposed a freeze of salaries in the public sector, including the teachers. The protection of human rights necessitates an anticipatory assessment of the impact that such initiatives might have, with a view to preventing (or at least minimizing) their negative human rights impact. Since their inception, human rights have served as an indispensable corrective for all democratic measures. Children, the privileged subjects of the right to education, are not entitled to vote. Consequently, their right to education is protected by the rule of the law. 12. The National Development Plan 2002-2006 prioritizes the "education revolution" in the social sphere. Its principal objectives are to increase coverage (to 1.5 million places in basic education and 400,000 places in higher education) and improve the quality and efficiency of education. More than half of these additional places in basic education (800,000) will be created through restructuring (mergers of educational institutions and increases in the ratio of pupils to teachers and classrooms) without an increase in funding. The other half were to have been financed through savings, as was proposed in the referendum. Following the rejection of the referendum, the Government "is looking at alternative ways of finding the resources that were envisaged"11. The Development Plan 2002-2006 does not mention the right to education, nor does it provide for a strategy to extend free education or reduce direct costs of education. Quite the reverse, it espouses the principle of co-financing by families and students, thereby shifting the State's human rights obligations on to private individuals. The imposition of value added tax on enrolment fees illustrates the application of market principles to education,12 or in the words of Alberto Yepes of Corporación Región, the transformation of education into a profitable business. Since Colombia does not have a rights-based education strategy, the Special Rapporteur recommends as assessment of the impact of the "education revolution" on the right to education. A. "Public schools here operate as if they were private" [ Go to Contents ] 13. The core tenets of the right to education include the guarantee of compulsory and free education for all school-aged children, the principle of non-discrimination as regards the right to education and human rights in education, and the prevention of abuse of schooling through the definition of the objectives and contents of education in accordance with international human rights law. 14. That compulsory education should be free is axiomatic in international human rights law, much as in Colombian history. Law No. 12 of 1934 placed a legal obligation on the State to allocate 10 per cent of the national budget to education and to provide free primary education. The constitutional reform of 1936 enshrined free compulsory education. Secondary education was made free in 1938. 15. Fifty years later, the 1991 Constitution reaffirmed free compulsory education, except for those able to pay for it. This qualified guarantee permits the assessment of a family's ability to pay using arbitrary criteria. All available information indicates that inability to pay is the principal reason why children fail to enrol or abandon school. 16. Colombian children demand "free, non-elitist education"13, referring to the six socio-economic strata ranging from 1, the lowest, to 6, the highest, and to the educational exclusion and fragmentation resulting from charging for education. This educational model is "a recipe for perpetuating poverty and inequality"14 because it reproduces economic and social stratification. A fragmented system of education results in a fragmented society. The poorest strata, 1 and 2, dispose of less than 5 per cent of the total income, whereas strata 5 and 6 account for 60 per cent15. Family income is the fundamental determining factor in the education of children and young people, particularly in higher education, where there is an enrolment of "less than 6 per cent of young people from stratum 1 aged between 18 and 24".16 The gap between rich and poor 17 is illustrated by the average 5.7 years of schooling for young people from strata 1 and 2, compared with over 11 years for stratum 6, and by the fact that, in Bogotá, "42.5 per cent of young people from the lower strata for part of the labour market, compared with just 3.7 per cent in the higher strata"18.
17. In addition, decentralization in the education sector has increased administrative costs (which are high owing to the fragmented nature of the education system )19, including the salaries of officials:
18. The Education Development Plan for 2003-2006 sets out three priorities for the population aged between 5 and 18, namely extending coverage, improving quality, and improving the efficiency of education. The changes are similar to the education policies pursued by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the 1980s (E/CN.4/2000/6/Add.2, paras. 13-16). These placed emphasis on "educational production", its outsourcing to providers of private education, testing and evaluations of teachers according to their students' performance in examinations, and resource allocation based on results rather than costs. Subsidies enabling certain poor pupils to pay private schooling ("demand-driven subsidies") are also replicated from the English system of the 1980s: "Demand-driven subsidies are intended to benefit children from low-income categories […] These students will be placed in private schools with high quality standards. The recipients will be able to pay direct charges.21"
19. The Special Rapporteur deems it necessary to emphasize that the coexistence of public and private education, regulated by public and private law respectively, requires a clear and explicit demarcation of the scope of these two different education systems. The Constitutional Court has stressed that:
20. The Special Rapporteur recommends an anticipatory impact assessment of the policies to extend private education, as contained in the "education revolution", on the right to education, and measures to prevent (or at least minimize) their negative impact. B."Either food or school" [ Go to Contents ] 21. The Government's foremost obligation is to guarantee primary education for all children, which requires considerable investment. School-aged children are the privileged subjects of the right to education. Although the State need not be the sole investor in education, international human rights law requires it to be the principal investor. The right to education cannot be translated into reality when there is a shortage of school places or if schools simply do not exist. The State's obligation to guarantee free and compulsory education does not allow exclusion on any grounds. 22. Those with inadequate access to education transmit this legacy to the next generation. Making families and local communities financially responsible for education widens the gap between the haves and have-nots and especially those who have nothing, such as the very many victims of forced displacement. To break this vicious circle, Governments must prioritize and finance free education for all children. The history of the right to education shows that compulsory schooling cannot be achieved unless education is free. In Colombia, public and private investment in education is equal, with both representing about 4 per cent of GDP.23 Thus there are two parallel education systems in Colombia: poor public education for the poor and expensive private education for the rich. In primary education, about 30 per cent of pupils attend private schools, 45 per cent attend private secondary schools, and 75 per cent in higher education attend private institutions. This accentuates educational differences based on the wealth or poverty of the family; pre-school and higher education are the privilege of those in the higher income bracket. 23. "Progressive realization" is the term used in international human rights treaties regarding the right to education. Governments are thus obliged to ensure immediately free and compulsory primary education for all, or to elaborate a plan and seek international assistance to fulfil this obligation as speedily as possible. Colombia ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1968 but, 35 years later, education is still neither free nor universal. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has found that "this practice by the State party is contrary" to the Covenant (E/C.12/1/Add.74, para. 27). 24. The Ministry of Education is budgeting 1 million pesos (US$ 365) per pupil per year. The costs of compulsory public education in Bogotá include an enrolment fee of between US$ 15 and US$ 30, the cost of school uniforms and equipment varying between US$ 19 and US$ 52, to which must be added costs of transport (approximately US$ 15 a month), textbooks and school meals. According to CCJ, the average cost per pupil is an annual 1,080,000 pesos or three times the minimum monthly wage, which is beyond the means of the poorest strata. 25. The Special Rapporteur was informed about direct charges for education which should be free but is not. In Chocó, the poorest department in the country, she was told that "free education is an illusion". The enrolment and other fees in public primary education vary between 30,000 and 150,000 pesos, and at the secondary-school level between 120,000 and 250,000 pesos. In Bogotá, displaced children 24 are exempt from charges in their first year of school, but the following year they must pay an enrolment fee of 85,000 pesos. The education authorities' power to assess a family's capacity to pay for education leads to a cruel choice for children: either to eat or go to school. 26. According to the World Bank, Colombia is the only country in the region where tuition fees are charged in primary education25. The Colombian Constitution affirms that compulsory public education (9 years long, from age 5 to 15) should be free "without prejudice to the possibility of charging school fees to those able to pay". There are two interpretations of this guarantee. One holds that "free" means a subsidy for those unable to pay; the other regards free education as an integral part of the right to education. The first interpretation defines education as a responsibility that is shared between the State and the family, while the second treats it as the responsibility of the State26. 27. Post-compulsory education should be made gradually available and accessible to all. Contrary to the provisions of human rights treaties, a right to higher education in Colombia has not been widened. In fact, higher education has been progressively commercialized. The Human Development: Colombia 2000 report diagnosed "the segmentation and ranking of educational institutions corresponding to the social origin of their intake27". 28. The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Colombian State should immediately and explicitly affirm its international obligation to ensure free education for all children of compulsory school age. Translating free education into practice requires a detailed breakdown of the costs incurred by pupils for education that ought to be free but is not. The Special Rapporteur further recommends that a study be undertaken into all these costs with the aim of their elimination. III. THE PROFILE OF EXCLUSION [ Go to Contents ] 29. Although the Educación Compromiso de Todos team has criticized the education statistics for being dispersed, outdated and contradictory depending on their source28, there are statistics for children at school, but none for children who are excluded. Their number is estimated at between 1.5 and 3.3 million29. The exact population of Colombia is unknown. Reliable data are lacking. Estimates are based on population projections done by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), which are themselves based on the most recent census from 1993. 30 Moreover, the national coverage of the registration of births was 81.6 per cent in 200031, and it still fails to cover the entire indigenous, rural, poor and displaced child populations. The number of the displaced is not known; it is estimated that 2.9 million people have been victims of forced displacement since 1985 32 and at least 1 million school-aged children have been displaced. The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government make an immediate commitment to free education and to subsidizing the full range of educational costs for all displaced children of school age. The lack of up-to-date, disaggregated statistics for all exclusion criteria makes it hard to gauge the number and profile of the children whose right to education is still being denied. The Special Rapporteur recommends that an up-to-date profile of educational exclusion be prepared immediately with a view to adopting all necessary measures to ensure full inclusion as soon as possible. 30. Education shows a history of exclusions based on all the discriminatory criteria currently prohibited. Simple prohibitions become complex when one attempts to capture the changing pattern of discrimination inside and outside school, and in the interaction between school and society. Discriminatory practices tend to combine a range of already prohibited grounds of discrimination with other exclusionary criteria that are not yet outlawed. Colombia's education strategy is not based on international human rights law and there are no educational statistics disaggregated by race, ethnicity or religion. It is therefore impossible to monitor progress or retrogression using human rights as the yardstick. Except for sex , discrimination on all other grounds continues to be unrecorded, thereby creating a vicious circle. When discrimination is not officially recorded, it can be ignored. Without such data, anyone who tries to prove discrimination is doomed to failure. Discrimination cannot be combated unless it has been documented. The Special Rapporteur recommends an immediate study into the nature and scope of discrimination in education, with the participation of its victims, so as to adopt policies and practices to eliminate discrimination and to ensure public scrutiny of the implementation of these policies and practices.
31. Accessibility is defined differently for each stage of education. It is the obligation of the Government to ensure compulsory education for all school-aged children. The right to education is realized progressively in post-compulsory education, broadening access as conditions permit, but always ensuring that human rights are prioritized in the use of all available resources. The priority for military expenditure over social investment in Colombia is illustrated by the increase in military spending from 3.5 to 5.8 per cent of GDP in 200633, despite the constitutional obligation to prioritize social investment over any other kind of budgetary allocation. The Constitutional Court has explained rights-based budgetary priorities regarding forced displacement:
32. The level of budgetary allocation for education is insufficient to guarantee all-encompassing primary education, even less compulsory education of 9 years. According to calculations by the National Planning Department (DNP), school enrolment rates in 2000 were 40.5 per cent in pre-school education, 83.6 per cent in primary school, 62.6 per cent in secondary, and 15.1 per cent in higher education. Approximately 35 per cent of primary school pupils enrol but drop out in the first few years, the majority because they cannot afford to continue.35 The Special Rapporteur recommends an increase of 30 per cent in budgetary allocation for education, from 4 to 6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). 33. Before the advent of the right to education, work was the main - often the only - form of "education" for poor children. Child labour continues, however, because of poverty and the need for children to work in order to survive. There is much too little to mention as the Government's rights-based response to child labour, despite the fact that, according to UNICEF, "there are approximately 2.5 million working children aged between 9 and 17 in Colombia"36. According to DANE, there are 2.3 million child workers aged between 5 and 17 in the country: 5 per cent of children aged between 5 and 9 work, and 30 per cent of those aged between 15 and 17; 52 per cent of all children work without pay37. One obstacle to instrumentalizing education in the abolition of child labour is education policy itself. There is no type of "preference" for working children therein, education being everybody's right. However, this approach leads to inequity. Programmes are not flexible, nor are they adjusted to specific populations, such as child workers38. The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government make an immediate commitment to free education, subsidizing the full range of educational costs for all school-aged child workers and, also, adapting education to these children, with their participation in the design and assessment of this policy. 34. Women's organizations explained to the Special Rapporteur that education actually contributes to displacement because it does not reflect the realities of life in the countryside, where the lack of prospects drives people to the towns. However, the World Bank highlighted for 1995-2001 "an increase in urban poverty that is more acute than in rural areas", and thus described its impact on the conflict: "The improvement in the economic situation will not in itself be sufficient to stop the violence, but an increase in poverty could be an additional explosive factor." 39 Furthermore, the unemployment rate of 16 per cent among higher education graduates and 18 per cent among those with secondary education 40 underscores the need for an intersectoral strategy. The Special Rapporteur has often encountered in her work this disturbing phenomenon of "graduate unemployment" or "the unemployed with university degrees", which epitomizes an enormous loss of public and private investment. The import of the rights-based strategy is that it links together all human rights and instrumentalizes education for their enjoyment. The State's international human rights obligations oblige all State actors to incorporate human rights in their strategies, policies and practices, and require concordant action of all public authorities. The Special Rapporteur reiterates her recommendations regarding design of a Development Plan with human rights as the cross-cutting theme. IV. CHOCÓ: "ALLOW US TO REMAIN DIFFERENT" [ Go to Contents ] 35. Accessibility of education encompasses different government obligations. Education as a civil and political right demands the Government to allow setting up schools and universities, while education as a social and economic right requires the Government to ensure that education is, at least, free, compulsory and accessible for all school-aged children. Education as a cultural right requires the affirmation of collective, alongside individual rights. The Special Rapporteur needs to highlight a common misperception regarding the difference between education and the right to education. Compulsory, imposed schooling may constitute a human rights violation unless it complies with the criteria of acceptability and adaptability. 36. Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities continue to be victims of systematic racial discrimination (A/54/18, 1999, para. 432). Racial discrimination is still not prohibited in Colombia, nor is there a strategy for its elimination, as required by international human rights law. As the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on human rights defenders has stated: "Discrimination as such, by somebody not directly involved in hostilities, continues unpunished by Colombian legislation" (E/CN.4/2002/106/Add.2, para. 34). 37. In the department of Chocó, where 90 per cent of the population is Afro-Colombian and 5 per cent indigenous, 82 per cent of households lack basic public services (E/CN.4/2003/13, para. 96). "Colombia seems to have forgotten Chocó", was a typical remark to the Special Rapporteur when she spoke about her plans to visit it during her mission. Chocó, nevertheless, cannot forget the rest of the country because of the import of " that absurd violence that we do not understand", as many local people put it to the Special Rapporteur. The Human Development: Colombia 2000 report said that "throughout this period, Bogotá as the capital and Chocó were departments with the best and the worst human development indicators"41. Statistics do not portray the coastal atmosphere nor the absence of communications, with canoe often being the sole medium. 38. The concept of colombianidad (Colombian identity) necessitates combining the respect of diversity with the forging of national identity. Ethno-education, 42 affirmed by Law No. 115 of 1994 for groups or communities "that have their own indigenous culture, language, traditions and codes of behaviour", necessitates differentiated treatment. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the model of a constitutional educational assembly, proposed by Chocóanos, so as to design an indigenous educational model through the participation of all subjects of the right to education, individual as well as collective. V. THE KILLINGS OF TEACHERS [ Go to Contents ] 39. The right to education involves five key actors: the Government as the provider and/or funder of public education; each individual as the subject of the right to education; the children, whose education is compulsory; their parents as the first educators; and, lastly, professional educators, that is, teachers and professors. Although Colombia has a well-developed legal framework for human rights, the right to education lacks proper legal safeguards for the rights of all key actors. 40. During her mission, the National Trade Union School gave the Special Rapporteur a list of 691 teachers who had been killed during the past decade.43 She was astonished that none of these cases was resolved by the Government. FECODE gave the Special Rapporteur a list of 34 teachers killed between 1 January and 6 October 2003. In the first part of 2003, three teachers were killed each month on average. In addition, the Special Rapporteur received detailed information about the killing of 70 professors, students and university staff belonging to the Association of University Teaching Staff (ASPU), the Union of University Workers and Employees of Colombia (SINTRAUNICOL) and the National Federation of University Teachers between 1985 and 2003. She was even more astonished to learn from the Ministry of the Interior and Justice that teachers were not specifically included in the categories entitled to protection. The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Colombian Government take immediate steps to clarify the killings of teachers. 41. The teaching profession was affected by Law No. 715 and the new legislation on teachers, which introduced longer working days, increased the pupil-teacher ration, and made the funding of schools and teachers conditional on the performance of the pupils in tests. Despite the appearance that killings of teachers cannot be extricated from the armed conflict, Amnesty International has noted that the tendency to ascribe such killings to the armed conflict disguises their true cause, namely the retaliation for protests against economic policies, particularly privatization. 44 The database of the National Trade Union School reveals that, in 76 per cent of cases in 2002, the human rights of trade unionists were violated because of their trade union work. 45 The Colombian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has diagnosed "anti-union violence" and "criminal attacks on teaching staff, principally in universities" (E/CN.4/2002/17, paras. 290-292). FECODE has repeatedly demanded protection for teachers, without a commitment from the Government. If teachers are threatened and forced to move, without the status of a "threatened teacher" they face disciplinary proceedings for abandoning their posts. Possibilities for temporary transfers are limited and rule out the majority of threatened teachers. The realization of the right to education cannot be imagined without the protection of the human, professional, trade union and academic rights and freedoms of teachers. The Special Rapporteur recommends that immediate measures be taken to remedy the absence of their protection in Colombia. 42. The Special Rapporteur has analysed the ample evidence of threats against teachers for being educators. The following are typical examples: "tell that little pipsqueak professor X that he has been declared a military target; he should leave town within 24 hours;" "we regret to inform you that, effective X o'clock on X date, such-and-such teacher must discontinue all teaching activities for 12 months, failing which she will be considered a military target." Moreover, threats against the very teaching and learning of human rights have included the charge that these activities contain "the seeds of subversion". Such threats are received by teachers and students alike. The Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government emphatically affirm the legitimacy and necessity of teaching, learning and defending human rights. VI. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF EDUCATION [ Go to Contents ] 43. Although education is steeped in the prevailing values, it facilitates the emergence of new values and attitudes. Accordingly, human rights law requires that education be designed so as to eliminate exclusion and discrimination, and employed to realize the objective of all human rights for all. Our knowledge is, nevertheless, inversely correlated with the importance of the object we study. We know a great deal about education policies and laws, but less about the teaching process and even less about the learning process. In 1991, Juan Francisco Aguilar Soto described the disconnect between in-school and out-of-school education: "Knowledge acquired in school is divorced from knowledge gained outside it, that is, there is a disconnect between the school curriculum, the form in which its content is 'transmitted' by teachers, and the general knowledge, the system of values, beliefs, sagacity and customs of importance in daily life, which in Colombia embraces a broad social and cultural spectrum."46 44. Furthermore, students are exposed to conflicting influences within school itself: "Pupils encounter a dilemma: their teachers set great store by high achievement, yet their peers value mediocrity. When children reach adolescence, their peer group acquires overwhelming importance and, except for a handful of very intelligent individuals, most students swallow the opinion of their peers that it is foolish to do more than is necessary to get by. Research in secondary schools clearly shows that academic does not gain for children acceptance by their peers. 47 45. The Colombian Constitution defines education as a public service with a social function, but does not refer to its political function, despite demanding from education to "instil respect for human rights in each Colombian". 46. Forty years without peace in Colombia necessitate analysing the impact of violence on the right to education. Data supplied by human rights organizations for the year 2002 reveal the gravity of the situation. On average, 20 people died every day as a result of socio-political violence48 and 13 were arbitrarily detained.49 An average of 1,623 people were victims of forced displacement every day, one family every 10 minutes. 50 And, according to the Ombudsman, every day in 2001 an average of 11 children below the age of 18 died a violent death. 47. The task of socializing children against a backdrop of violence and militarization imposes enormous demands on education. In the words of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, the fact of "many Colombians [being] indifferent to violence" because they "accept the conflict as a part of life" (E/CN.4/2002/83/Add.3, para. 11) has a devastating impact on children. Ana Ofelia, a 10-year-old indigenous girl, has said: "We, children, want to see joy in the eyes of our parents and brothers, not the fear we see now, the fear that at any moment they could be ill-treated, disappeared or killed."51 The application filed by Yeny María Osuna Montes, a pupil seeking the removal of the police unit that had turned her school into a battlefield, stated: "We live in insecurity and tension, knowing that we are being used as human shields by the police unit at our backs.52" According to the Ministry of the Interior, "the Government is prepared to bury the past"53. But how can this past be explained to children? The Special Rapporteur spoke with four secondary-school girls, who told her that "nothing is said about it; it is a taboo", even though girls have been raped or their teachers killed. Or, "some girls were forced to endure a living death", that is were abused to such an extent that they felt they were dead. It is crucially important to explain to children what has happened. Obviously, the lack of protection for the human rights of teachers and pupils makes this hard to do. 48. Most teachers in pre-school, primary and secondary school are women (66.6 per cent in 1990). 54 The majority of combatants are men. It is possible that education in Colombia will continue its reverse gender imbalance with the shortage of male teachers and, in the future, of male pupils. Previous analyses by the Special Rapporteur have confirmed that the socialization of boys in their role as combatants is a gender issue, as is the role of education in it, and its role in triggering armed conflicts (E/CN.4/2001/52, paras. 46-47). Colombia's schools are targets of attacks by armed groups, but they are also involved in "education for war": "The army and the police have intervened in a number of schools in impoverished areas, conducting exercises in military strategy and 'psychological operations' among the civilian population; in these schools they have been involved in education and military training, and the establishment of bases for security operations.55" The Special Rapporteur recommends that schools be insulated from the conflict, defined and protected as "zones of peace" and as the space for rebuilding the lives of children and young people victimized by violence and forced displacement. 49. Schools have also been a recruiting ground. As one teacher put it to the Special Rapporteur, what can she say, on her salary of 300,000 pesos, to a 16-year-old student earning 800,000 pesos as a combatant? In the words of children, "if young people had attractive educational and lifestyle options and opportunities, the recruitment of child soldiers could be avoided"56. The Special Rapporteur is concerned that the National Accord on the Equity between Women and Men, signed on 14 October 2003, makes a reference to "women peacemakers" from the National Development Plan 2003-2006, but contains no commitment in this area despite the crucial importance of peacemaking in Colombia. The Special Rapporteur recommends a gender-based education strategy, based on analyses of educational processes from the viewpoint of both sexes, and aimed at a model of education opposed to conflict and violence, one that promotes the peaceful society based on equal human rights for all. VII. HUMAN RIGHTS THROUGH EDUCATION: "WHAT MEANING IS ATTRIBUTED TO GENDER?" [ Go to Contents ] 50. Acceptability of education encompasses guarantees of quality, minimum health and safety standards, and professional standards for teachers which must be set, verified and enforced by the Government. The acceptability of education has been considerably expanded through the development of international human rights law. Indigenous and minority rights have prioritized the teaching and learning of their own cultures and languages. The prohibition of corporal punishment has transformed school discipline. The emergence of children as subjects of the right to education and rights in education have broadened the boundaries of acceptability. Moreover, the global commitment to eliminating gender discrimination has merged the definitions of acceptability and adaptability. 51. In her reports, the Special Rapporteur has often commented on a terminological shift to "gender" while continuing to refer to women alone. Colombian statistics show that there was an equal number of male and female ministers in the Government in 2003, but "the presence of women in public office has not been translated into policies for the advancement of women"57. Colombian education statistics reflect the gender balance in enrolments in primary and secondary education, and a higher proportion of female students in higher education. The World Bank has observed that the gender focus as an analytical model demonstrates male disadvantage because of their worse educational performance, and because boys and men are "disproportionate victims of violent deaths caused by the armed conflict and criminality"58. 52. Human rights prioritize the kind of the education that is imparted. Access to education is far from being the only subject of concern. The key question in education is: who defines what should be taught and how? The State becomes an educator through its power to design the curriculum. Unlike many other countries, in May 2002 Colombia obtained national curricular standards for the language, mathematics, natural sciences and environmental education. The process of developing these standards included human rights as part of "civic competence", and the Special Rapporteur reiterates her recommendation to the Government to reinforce the legitimacy of human rights, and to develop their teaching and learning with full participation of human rights defenders, teachers and students in order to adapt the educational processes to the Colombian context. However, the Special Rapporteur is concerned about the lack of information on how these curricular standards are applied: "[The curriculum standards] are not widely known and, therefore, except for the school-year timetable, compliance is not demanded on a permanent basis."59 53. Colombia is the only country in the region where teenage pregnancy increased from 10 per cent in 1990 to 19 per cent in 2000.60 The suspension of sex education, reproductive health and family planning programmes may have been the reason for this (E/CN.4/2002/83/Add.3, para. 31). Moreover, despite the Constitutional Court's jurisprudence whereby expulsion from school because of pregnancy is a violation of the right to education, school rules contain stipulations such as the following: "Pregnancy is a reason for expulsion, given that it is an offence against morality and damages the reputation of the school."61 The Special Rapporteur cited in her reports the jurisprudence of Colombian Constitutional Court (E/CN.4/2000/6, para. 60) as a model for the protection of the right to education and, also, as an influential means of human rights education. She recommends that the Government immediately develop mechanisms to effectively ensure the elimination of all discrimination against pregnant girls and child-mothers, as postulated by the Constitutional Court. 54. Adaptability of education requires schools to adjust to the children in accordance with the principle of the best interests of every child, enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This change ended the practice of forcing children to adapt to whatever schooling was available. The indivisibility of human rights broadens the requirement of adaptability to encompass safeguards for all human rights within education, and also to facilitate the realization of all human rights through education. Notes *.The summary is being circulated in all official languages. The full report, annexed to the summary, is being circulated in the original language and English only. It was not possible to complete the report until after the Government's comments were received on 19 December 2003. «-- back 1.E/CN.4/1999/49, paras. 51-74; E/CN.4/2000/6, paras. 32 to 65; E/CN.4/2001/52, paras. 64-77; E/CN.4/2002/60, paras. 22-45. «-- back 2. Ombudsman, El derecho a la educación en la constitución colombiana, la jurisprudencia y los instrumentos internacionales, Bogotá, 2003; Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development, Informe sobre el derecho a la educación en Colombia, Bogotá, October 2003. «-- back 3. The demand for "the right to have rights" was used in July 2001 during a protest aimed at the release of Alba Lucía Rodríguez, who had been raped, sentenced to 42 years in prison for the murder of her daughter during childbirth, and acquitted in 2002. «-- back 4.Investiture of the new commander of the Colombian Air Force, Bogotá, 8 September 2003. «-- back 5.In the Declaration of the donors' meeting in London, on 10 July 2003, the donors "welcomed the Colombian Government's declaration of acknowledgment and support for the role of civil society and NGOs […] in defending human rights […]. They further welcomed and underlined the importance of the Colombian Government's pledge to protect civil society leaders, including trade union leaders, who have been victimized by threats against themselves and their families". «-- back 6. Hacia la construcción de una ciudad más amable y justa. Políticas de niñez y juventud en Bogotá 2001-2004, UNICEF, Bogotá, 2003. «-- back 7. "Colombia's conflicts: more order and less law", The Economist, 9 November 2002. «-- back 8. Injunctions were established by the 1991 Constitution as a judicial remedy whereby any person may petition a judge, at any time or place, on his or her own behalf or on behalf of another, in an urgent summary procedure, for immediate protection of his or her basic rights, when these are harmed or threatened by acts or omissions of any public authority. «-- back 9. Although international human rights law affirms that "everyone has the right to education", the Colombian Constitution defines this right solely for children. The jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court has recognized the right to education as a fundamental right of children, despite its absence from the chapter on fundamental constitutional rights. «-- back 10. The World Bank, "Assistance strategy for Colombia projects up to US$ 3.3 billion in loans over four years", News Release No. 2003/202/LAC, 16 January 2003. «-- back 11.Reply of the Colombian Government to the draft report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Geneva, 8 December 2003. «-- back 12. Act No. 788 of 2002, arts. 34 and 35. «-- back 13. Colombian section of World Social Forum on Children, www.foroninosyninas.galeon.com. «-- back 14.Educación Compromiso de Todos, Situación de la educación básica, media y superior en Colombia, Casa Editorial El Tiempo, Fundación Corona and Fundación Restrepo Barco, Bogotá, second edition, 2002, p. 62. «-- back 15. Memorandum of the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation to the Executive Directors on a Country Assistance Strategy of the World Bank Group for the Republic of Colombia, Report No. 25129-CO, 24 December 2002. «-- back 16. World Bank, Tertiary Education in Colombia: Paving the Way for Reform, 2003, p. 3. «-- back 17.L.J. Garay, Colombia entre la exclusion y el desarrollo: propuestas para la transición al estado social de derecho, Office of the Controller General, Bogotá, 2002, p. xxxiii. «-- back 18. UNICEF, Hacia la construcción de una ciudad más amable y justa. Políticas de niñez y juventud en Bogotá 2001-2004, UNICEF, Bogotá, 2003. «-- back 19.According to the office of Controller General, administrative costs accounted for 16.9 per cent in 1999, with "other items" constituting an additional 9.3 per cent of the education budget. «-- back 20. Programme for Educational Reform in Latin America and the Caribbean (PREAL), Entre el avance y el retroceso - Informe de progreso educativo en Colombia 2003, Bogotá, 2003, p. 6. «-- back 21. Education revolution: sectoral plan 2002-2006, March 2003, www.mineducacion.gov.co. «-- back 22. Judgement T-388 of 2001. «-- back 23. J.E. Vargas and A. Sarmiento, La descentralización de los servicios de educación en Colombia, ECLAC Public Policy Reforms, Series No. 50, United Nations, Santiago, Chile, 1997. «-- back 24. Administrative requirements include the certificate of the status as a displaced person (obtainable through the Single Registration System (SUR)), which approximately 35.4 per cent of the displaced do not possess. «-- back 25. "In Latin America, there are essentially no tuition fees (only Colombia has these)", World Bank, User fees in primary education: Draft for review, Washington D.C., February 2002, p. 7. «-- back 26."Público y privado", Educación Compromiso de Todos, No. 5, June 2003. «-- back 27. Desarrollo Humano: Colombia 2000, National Planning Department, Social Mission and UNDP, Bogotá, 2001, p. 100. «-- back 28. Educación Compromiso de Todos, , Situación de la educación básica, media y superior en Colombia, Casa Editorial El Tiempo, Fundación Corona and Fundación Restrepo Barco, Bogotá, second edition, 2002. «-- back 29. The estimate for the "education revolution" was that approximately 1.5 million children were excluded from compulsory education, but the Controller General calculated that 3,297,732 children were excluded from education. «-- back 30. Interview with Daniel Rivera, Director of Planning at the Ministry of Education (Educación Compromiso de Todos, No. 4, November 2003, p. 10). «-- back 31. UNICEF, La niñez colombiana en cifras, www.unicef.org.co. «-- back 32. El embrujo autoritario. Primer año de gobierno de Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development, Bogotá, September 2003, p. 124. «-- back 33. "Colombia's conflicts: Superman Uribe holds back the tide", The Economist, 7 June 2003. «-- back 34. Judgement SU-1150 of 2000. «-- back 35. The 1997 survey of living conditions revealed as the main cause of dropping out of school was its cost (33.6 per cent of the respondents) and for 20.5 per cent of the respondents, the pupils drop out because they did not like school. «-- back 36. Trabajo doméstico infantil y juventil en hogares ajenos: de la formación de los derechos a su aplicación, UNICEF Colombia and Save the Children, Bogotá, October 2001, p. 10. «-- back 37. DANE, National Survey of Child Labour, November 2001. «-- back 38. International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC)-International Labour Organization (ILO), Análisis de la politica nacional frente al trabajo infantil en Colombia 1995-2002, Bogotá, November 2002, p. 44-45. «-- back 39. World Bank, Memorandum of the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation to the Executive Directors on a Country Assistance Strategy of the World Bank Group for the Republic of Colombia, Report No. 25129-CO, 24 December 2002. «-- back 40. World Bank, Tertiary Education in Colombia: Paving the Way for Reform, 2003. «-- back 41. Desarrollo Humano: Colombia 2000, National Planning Department, Social Mission and UNDP, Bogotá, 2001. «-- back 42. The Constitution has stipulated that education for ethnic groups must respond to their aspirations, and ministerial directive No. 08/2003 has reaffirmed the applicability of all ethno-educational legislation. «-- back 43. The National Trade Union School provided the Special Rapporteur with its list of teachers killed between 1 January 1991 and 29 September 2003. «-- back 44. Amnesty International, Fundamental rights at work: Amnesty International concerns to the International Labour Conference, IOR 42/001/2002, 1 May 2002. «-- back 45. "Cien días críticos para los derechos humanos: contra quién es la guerra?" Cien días, vol. 10, No. 51, June-November 2002, p. 39. «-- back 46. J.F. Aguilar Soto, La Transformación de la escuela en Colombia, Centre for Ecumenical and Social Promotion, Santa Fé de Bogotá, second edition, 1993, p. 12. «-- back 47. Edugénero Fascicle 6: Roles y formatos de la participación, Central University, Bogotá, April 2003, p. 10. «-- back 48. Alternative report to the fifth periodic report of Colombia to the Human Rights Committee, submitted by CCJ in July 2003. «-- back 49. Database of human rights and political violence, Research and Popular Education Centre (CINEP) (2002). «-- back 50. Advisory Office for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), 2002. «-- back 51. Cauca Indigenous Regional Council (CRIC), Informe sobre el derecho a la educación en los pueblos indígenas de Colombia ante la Relatora Especial sobre el derecho a la educación, Bogotá, 8 October 2003. «-- back 52. Judgement SU-256 of 1999. «-- back 53. "Narcotráfico se acaba este año", El Tiempo, 12 January 2003. «-- back 54. Ministry of Education, Avances del plan de administración de recursos humanos y del censo de maestros y funcionarios del sector educativo, 1990 «-- back 55. Coalition against the involvement of children and young people in armed conflict in Colombia, Niñez, escuela y conflicto armado en Colombia, Bogotá, October 2003. «-- back 56. E. Páez, No queremos que nos limiten nuestros sueños de niña: Las niñas en el conflicto armado en Colombia, Terre des Hommes, Bogotá, 2002, p. 170. «-- back 57. Informe Derechos de las Mujeres en Colombia 2003, National Women's Network and National Congress of Women's Networks, Bogotá, 2003, p. 112. «-- back 58. World Bank, Memorandum of the President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the International Finance Corporation to the Executive Directors on a Country Assistance Strategy of the World Bank Group for the Republic of Colombia, Report No. 25129-CO, 24 December 2002. «-- back 59. PREAL, ), Entre el avance y el retroceso - Informe de progreso educativo en Colombia 2003, Bogotá, 2003, p. 7. «-- back 60. National Demographic and Health Survey, Profamilia, Bogotá, 2000. «-- back 61. Corporación Punto de Vida report, prepared for the Special Rapporteur. «-- back |