31.An increasing involvement of diverse actors from all over the world vindicating the right to education has amplified theSpecial Rapporteur's outreach. These range from parents of school children toteacher's trade unions, and, increasingly specialized institutions developing expertise in human rights education. On 23 July 2002, the Special Rapporteur participated in the 20th Inter-Disciplinary Human Rights Course at the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (San José, Costa Rica), with a lecture on the right to education. The immense interest for this topic was reflected in an unplanned evening session which highlighted progress from learning about human rights to learning human rights. On 26 and 27 July 2002, the Special Rapporteur participated in a seminar on the justiciability of economic, social and cultural rights in Mexico City. ¹⁰ That meeting highlighted the existing jurisprudence of the Inter-American Commission and Court on Human Rights, especially its increasing focus on integrating and enforcing all human rights. Increasing commitments to economic and social rights by governmental and non-governmental actors represent a particularly welcome development.

32.Amongst many facets of education, its operative definition as a cultural right has thus far attained the least attention. The placement of cultural rights on the Commission's agenda constitutes a welcome change. TheCommission's resolution on cultural rights has underlined Athat market forces alone cannot guarantee the preservation and promotion of cultural diversity, supporting the essential role of public policy (resolution 2002/26, para. 13) in molding education so as to best contribute to the enhancement of cultural rights.

33.Education vocabulary often reflects the free-market approach through terms such as Athe global market for advanced human capital or even Ahumanistic capital. ¹¹ Economists within the World Bank favour investment in education for its social rates of return, or externalities, defining them as individual's human capital enhancing the productivity of other factors of production through channels that are not internalized by the individual. ¹² The ordinary meaning of the term capital is Awealth (money or property) owned or used in business. ¹³ It is therefore, in the Special Rapporteur's view, an inappropriate designator for people because owning people, or using them in business, was one of the first universal prohibitions, by far predating the development of international human rights law. Perhaps the very institution of the Special Rapporteur, working without any remuneration, is a useful reminder that values other than Awealth creation underpin human rights.

34.The World Bank has explicitly mentioned human rights criteria regarding the contents of school textbooks: Ait is expected that book provision programs financed by the Bank subscribe to the principles expressed in the Un's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Bank reserves the right to withdraw funding for books which can be shown to breach some provisions of that declaration. ¹⁴ The Special Rapporteur has highlighted controversies that school textbooks raise (E/CN.4/2002/60, para. 67) and pointed out domestic and international jurisprudence (E/CN.4/2001/52, paras. 73-77). The legal framework which has developed in the past fifty years on the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be, in the Special Rapporteur's view, used as a corrective to the process of developing educational curricula and textbooks. She recommends that the process of preparing, using and assessing school textbooks be subsumed under the rule of law. Alongside the contents of textbooks, their chosen language often raises human rights concerns. World Bank guidance has emphasized Aprofitable trade in textbooks and the need to carefully assess Athe cost of providing materials in minority languages. The yardstick for such assessments could - and should - in the Special Rapporteur's view be a commitment to preserve the linguistic richness (not to say wealth) of humanity, or to promote minority and indigenous rights, not merely profitability.

35.The SpecialRapporteur's mission to Northern Ireland (E/CN.4/2003/9/Add. 2) has highlighted the importance of education in rupturing the inter-generational transmission of key factors that create a conflict-prone society. The language of instruction and the contents of education typify similar controversies world-wide. These routinely trigger political solutions or partial rights-based approaches, whereby Aeducation may actually contribute to the entrenchment of separation of communities as each group (that can afford to) establishes its own schools, teaching its own curriculum in its own language. ¹⁵

III. HUMAN RIGHTS SAFEGUARDS IN EDUCATION    [ Go to Contents ]

36.One of the most visible manifestations of increasing knowledge about and commitment to human rights is correspondence addressed to the United Nations. It raises diverse issues people from all corners of the world feel may constitute human rights violations in education, ranging from censorship of school textbooks to corporal punishment of schoolchildren, from a right of parents to educate their children themselves to the exclusion of children from education because they are deemed to be too old or too young. The Secretary-General's emphasis of the fact that people all over the world look to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for protection of their rights (A/57/387, para. 46) provides excellent guidance to all Commission mechanisms, and the Special Rapporteur has continued this part of her work (E/CN.4/2002/60, paras. 52-57) addressing the variety of issues brought to her attention.

1. Eliminating obstacles to teaching    [ Go to Contents ]

37.The global commitment to the quality of education entails the elimination of obstacles to teaching and learning and this, in turn, requires full recognition of the rights of both learners and their teachers. The Commission's mention of teachers, for the first time, in its resolution 2002/23 has inspired the Special Rapporteur to amplify her previous work on the affirmation of the rights of teachers, especially by studying the obstacles thereto (E/CN.4/2002/60, paras. 50-51; E/CN.4/2001/52, para. 16; E/CN.4/2000/6, paras. 42-44). Alongside her previous work, in cooperation with the ILO, on clarifying constraints upon the rights of teachers in Ethiopia (E/CN.4/2001/52, para. 19), the Special Rapporteur sent a joint letter to the Government of Zimbabwe on 18 October 2002 together with the Special Rapporteurs on torture and on freedom of opinion and expression and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. That urgent appeal sought to clarify the fate of numerous teachers whose protests against their collective dismissal were reportedly suppressed. The dismissal itself seems to have been prompted by a teacher's strike. Since no reply was received by the time this report had to be finalized, the Special Rapporteur will continue her efforts to clarify the fate of the teachers, the background and circumstances of the events that seem to have jeopardized not only their livelihoods but also their lives, and the evolving Government policy on the status of teachers.

38.The Special Rapporteur's visit to the World Bank on 4 November 2002 was an opportunity to examine different approaches regarding core international labour standards developed by the ILO. The World Bank's Fast-Track Initiative, mentioned above, is based on a calculated average teacher's salary of 3.6 times GDP per capita. Thus, policy reforms will necessitate increasing teacher's salaries in some countries, decreasing them in others, all outside the requirements of international labour law on trade union freedoms and collective bargaining. The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work includes Afreedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining among those fundamental rights that should be universally applied, including in global strategies for economic development. ¹⁶ The follow-up has included commitments by international organizations to the integration of fundamental principles and rights at work in their policy and practice. Different from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has made a formal and explicit commitment whereby Ain the design and formulation of its loans, ADB will comply with the internationally recognized labor standards. ¹⁷

39.It is a truism that teachers whose rights are denied cannot be expected to effectively teach human rights. The contents of educational curricula and textbooks are increasingly subjected to human rights assessments, which constitutes a new and particularly welcome development. Progressive inclusion of human rights safeguards in the processes of teaching and learning will gradually transform teaching about human rights into teaching human rights.

40.In September 1999, the Special Rapporteur initiated correspondence with the Government of India (E/CN.4/2001/52, para. 24) regarding many different facets of public policy concerning religion and education, including the revision of curricula and textbooks. On 14 January 2002, together with the Special Rapporteur on torture, she sent an urgent appeal to the Government of India related to the fate of participants in a conference on education policy, who were allegedly detained and ill-treated, to which there has been no reply as yet. The recent attention to the crucial importance of public policy for the relations between religious communities has highlighted the need to continue her efforts to clarify the human rights dimensions of recent and on-going changes. Amongst them, controversies relating to the contents of school textbooks have required her immediate attention and on 12 December 2002 she sent a letter to the Government of India, seeking information about the impact of a recent Supreme Court judgmentv ¹⁸ relating to the contents of history textbooks on the evolving Government policy and practice.

41. From 6 to 9 November 2002, the Special Rapporteur attended the Education International Conference Living & Learning Together, held in Malta. Obstacles to teaching and learning were found in the form of conflicting historical narratives that create insecurity amongst learners, especially where they had been socialized to accepting that there was one and only one truth. Teachers who challenge that truth as summarized in textbooks may be detained, arrested, or even killed. Specialized courses in human rights or peace education tend to present to children a world in which conflicts can be avoided, and easily so, while the environment around the school may be full of conflicts.

42.An increased focus on the human rights contents of in-school and out-of-school education, and on discrepancies between the two, appears particularly urgent. The Special Rapporteur has heeded the emphasis placed by the Commission on the contents of education curricula and textbooks (resolution 2002/74, para. 5) and strengthened her cooperation with the International Bureau of Education (IBE/UNESCO) on the basis of the Protocol of Cooperation of 1 October 1999 (E/CN.4/2000/6, para. 8). Inter-disciplinary work will facilitate analysis of the human rights contents of educational curricula and textbooks as well as the carrying out of case studies focused on the human rights impact of its changes, especially in post-conflict countries.

2. Promoting rights-based learning    [ Go to Contents ]

43.The specific obstacles to children's learning are many. They include hunger, ill-health, or tiredness because the child worked too hard or walked too far just to get to school. They do not predispose children to understand the meaning of human rights, except by noting their conspicuous absence in their own lives. Once these obstacles are eliminated, the language of instruction may impede communication between teachers and pupils, impeding both teaching and learning. Increased attention to the relevance of education for children's lives has highlighted the indivisibility of human rights. The affirmation of the child's right to health has obtained particular importance due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the Special Rapporteur plans to devote considerable attention to the linkage between health and education.

44.The rapidly increasing emphasis on preventing HIV/AIDS through education has reinforced the need to revisit the Secretary-General's call to address Athe deadly price of not going to school (E/CN.4/2001/52, para. 30). This has been supported by the Commission's call for Apreventive education against HIV/AIDS (resolution 2002/23, para. 4 (c)). While there is broad agreement on the importance of education for HIV/AIDS prevention, there is a great deal of disagreement about what should be taught at school and how. Education is typically deemed to be an elixir that can cure all diseases of society. Questioning how this should be done triggers different responses. One extreme is represented by emphasizing knowledge about Athe potential of curriculum changes to empower school learners to avoid HIV infection, ¹⁹ another by silence about human sexuality. Calls for children's right of access to information necessary for their self-protection are as numerous as are the objections and children pay a high price for disagreements among adults. This requires, in the Special Rapporteur's view, a careful examination of existing practices so as to distill best options for promoting rights-based processes of teaching and learning in the best interests of each child.

2. Stern, N. - Development: Learning the lessons, Global Agenda 2002/2003: Meeting the Challenges. The Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank, Washington DC, 28-29 September 2002 , Agenda Publishing, London, p. 8. «-- back

3. Guerrera, F. - Why handshakes may get harder, Financial Times, 21 November 2002 «-- back

4. The formal announcement of 12 June 2002 listed eighteen countries invited to join the FTI (Albania, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guyana, Honduras, Mauritania, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Niger, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia, and Yemen) and five to which World bank pledged intensified support so as to make them eligible for financing under the FTI (Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan). «-- back

5. UNESCO Education Web Digest of 2 December 2002, www.unesco.org/education/efa/news. «-- back

6. Melchiorre, A. - At What Age? ... Are School Children Employed, Married and Taken to Court? , Right to Education Project, November 2002, available at www.right-to-education.org. «-- back

7. International Finance Corporation - Investing in Private Education: IFC=s Strategic Directions , Washington D.C., July 2001, p. 15. «-- back

8. Education for All: Is the World on Track? EFA Global Monitoring Report 2002, UNESCO Publishing, Paris 2002. «-- back

9. Nordic Council of Ministers - Nordic Solidarity: Conference on Education and Development Co-operation under Norway=s Presidency in the Nordic Council of Ministers, Oslo, 3-4 June 2002, p. 19. «-- back

10. Seminario sobre justiciabilidad de los derechos económicos, sociales y culturales, Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional (CEHIL), Centro de los Derechos Humanos de la Universidad de Notre Dame (CCHR), y Instituto de Investigaciones jurídicas de la Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM). «-- back

11. The World Bank - Constructing Knowledge Societies: New Challenges for Tertiary Education, Washington D.C., 2002, p. 4. «-- back

12. Psacharopoulos, G. and Patrinos, H.A. - Returns to Investment in Education. A Further Update, Policy Research Working Paper, No. 2881, The World Bank, September 2002, p. 3. «-- back

13. Webster=s New World Dictionary of the American Language, The World Publishing Company, New York, 1974, p. 210. «-- back

14. World Bank Operational Guidelines for Textbooks & Reading Materials, Washington D.C., undated. «-- back

Wilson, D. - Minority Rights in Education. Lessons for the European Union from Estonia, Latvia, Romania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Right to Education Project, December 2002, available at www.right-to-education.org «-- back

16. The text of this Declaration and documents relating to its follow-up are available at www.ilo.org. «-- back

17. Asian Development Bank - Social Protection Strategy, para. 54 (b), (full text at www.adb.org). «-- back

18.Aruna Roy v. Union of India, judgment of 12 September 2002, (2002) 7 SCC 368. «-- back

19. Education for All: Is the World on Track? 2002 EFA Global Monitoring Report, Paris, 2002, p. 154. «-- back

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