Defining the right to education
Defining the Right to Education
©David San Millan/ ActionAid
The right to education has been universally recognised since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 (though referred to by the ILO already in the 1920’s) and has since been enshrined in various international conventions, national constitutions and development plans. However, while the vast majority of countries has signed up to, and ratified international conventions (such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) far fewer have integrated these rights in national constitutions or provided the legislative and administrative frameworks to ensure that these rights are realised in practice. In some cases the right exists along with the assumption that the user should pay for this right, undermining the very concept of a right. In others, the right exists in theory but there is no capacity to implement this right in practice. Inevitably, a lack of government support for the right to education hits the poorest hardest. Today, the right to education is still denied to millions around the world.
As well as being a right in itself, the right to education is also an enabling right. Education ‘creates the “voice” through which rights can be claimed and protected’, and without education people lack the capacity to ‘to achieve valuable functionings as part of the living’. If people have access to education they can develop the skills, capacity and confidence to secure other rights. Education gives people the ability to access information detailing the range of rights that they hold, and government’s obligations. It supports people to develop the communication skills to demand these rights, the confidence to speak in a variety of forums, and the ability to negotiate with a wide range of government officials and power holders.
Read more:
International Law and the Right to Education
Understanding and using int. law
Gender and the Right to Education
Rights Based Approaches to Education
There is - of course, one might say - no absolute agreement as to how to define human rights, but among ESC rights, the right to education is relatively well defined on the substance: universal access to free and compulsory primary education, universal availability/accessibility of secondary education, in particular by the progressive introduction of free education; equal access to higher education on the basis of capacity, in particular by the progressive introduction of free education. These standards are much more clear than, say, the standards regarding the right to health, the right to housing, the right to participate in cultural life, or the right to an adequate standard of living. This doesn't mean, of course, that these standards exhaust the definition of the right - we still have the quality issue as a big definitional problem.
Some of the aims and objectives of education, as defined in the international covenants and treaties, may include the following:
The development of human personality, a sense of dignity of individual talent, and mental and physical ability.
Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as cultural identity, language and values.
Enable people to participate effectively in a free society.
The promotion of understanding, tolerance, friendship among all groups, and to maintain peace.
To promote gender equality and respect for the environment.
However, to illustrate a point, these are certainly also the most malleable and less certain - it's easier to check if primary education is free and available to all, than to check if education is aimed to develop a sense of dignity, individual talent or to participate effectively in a free society. Not that these are impossible to define, but they give States a broader leeway than accessibility or availability.
