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En el presente informe, la Relatora Especial examina la forma en que el derecho a la educación contribuye a la prevención de crímenes atroces y violaciones masivas o graves de los derechos humanos. Destacando que la educación desempeña un papel fundamental en todas las etapas de la prevención, la Relatora Especial subraya el potencial preventivo particularmente contundente del derecho a la educación en las etapas tempranas, antes de que se hagan evidentes las señales de alerta. Ese papel debe vincularse con los propósitos de la educación y el derecho a una educación inclusiva y equitativa de calidad establecidos en los instrumentos internacionales.

La Relatora Especial, destacando las circunstancias en que las escuelas pueden convertirse en instrumentos de división y sentar las bases para el estallido de futuros conflictos violentos, presta especial atención a una serie de medidas relativas a la organización de los sistemas escolares, la pedagogía y los valores y conocimientos que se deben transmitir a los alumnos y que son cruciales desde el punto de vista de la prevención. Propone un marco educativo (conocido en inglés como “marco ABCDE”) que abarca los aspectos interrelacionados de la educación que es necesario promover para aprovechar al máximo el potencial preventivo del derecho a la educación.

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This document is written to be readily accessible to a non-legal audience and so to provide a stand-alone insight into the three relevant areas international law, and the potential of that law, in protecting education during insecurity and armed conflict.

This legal factsheet accompanies the Right to Education Initiative’s multimedia essay Caught in the crossfire: The right to education in eastern Ukraine. It has been made available for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. 

In this report, the Special Rapporteur commends the efforts made by Governments, who were under harsh pressure, to preserve human lives while facing scientific uncertainties. 

The health crisis has had numerous implications in all sectors of human life, leading to an economic crisis, as well as to what must be called an education crisis. In this report, the Special Rapporteur analyses the issues she considers to be the most pressing from a human rights perspective. Acting within a human rights framework is indeed crucial to ensure that measures adopted in response to the pandemic do not jeopardize the right to education and do not increase the suffering of the most marginalized. 

The Special Rapporteur stresses that while numerous innovative measures have been adopted in all corners of the globe by many governmental as well as non-governmental stakeholders to ensure some continuity of education, they could never have been expected to compensate for the patent global lack of preparedness for a crisis of this magnitude. Past failure to build strong and resilient education systems and to fight entrenched inequalities has opened the door for a dramatic impact on the most vulnerable and marginalized, to which no temporary measure adopted in haste could have fully responded.

The Special Rapporteur makes a number of recommendations in this regard. In particular, a thorough assessment should be conducted to unpack, in each local context, the dynamics at play that led to increased discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to education during the crisis. It should include an analysis of rising inequalities due to the measures adopted to face the pandemic; an investigation into the sustainability of economic and financial models behind education systems, including the consequence of poor funding of public educational institutions; a scrutiny of the role of private actors in education; an evaluation of the adequacy of social protection provided for education workers, including in the private sector; and scrutiny of the lack of cooperation between States’ administrations, educational institutions, teachers, learners, parents and communities.

Furthermore, the Special Rapporteur stresses that the deployment of online distance learning (together with radio and television), should only be seen as a temporary solution aimed at addressing a crisis. The digitalization of education should never replace onsite schooling with teachers, and the massive arrival of private actors through digital technology should be considered as a major danger for education systems and the right to education for all in the long term. A thorough debate needs to take place on the place that should be given to such learning in the future, having in mind not only possible opportunities but also the deleterious effect screens have on children and youth, including their right to health and education.

Joint statement made by GI-ESCR and the Right to Education Initiative at the 44th session of the UN Human Rights Council in July 2020 welcoming the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the right to education. The statement emphasised her call for States to prioritise the funding and delivery of free, quality, public education, and implement minimum standards to secure the privacy and data protection for learners and teachers.

 
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In the present report, the Special Rapporteur considers ways in which the right to education contributes to the prevention of atrocity crimes and mass or grave human rights violations. Stressing that education has a key role to play at all stages of prevention, the Special Rapporteur underlines the particularly forceful preventive potential of the right to education in the very early stages, before warning signs are apparent. That role is to be linked with the aims of education and the right to inclusive and equitable quality education, as established in international instruments.

The Special Rapporteur, highlighting circumstances under which schools can become tools for division and lay the groundwork for future violent conflicts, focuses on a number of steps regarding the organization of school systems, pedagogy and the values and skills to be transmitted to learners that are crucial in terms of prevention. She proposes an education framework (known in English as the “ABCDE framework”) that encompasses the interrelated features of education needed in order for the preventive potential of the right to education to be fully deployed. 

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This paper was commissioned by the Global Education Monitoring Report as background information to assist in drafting the 2019 GEM Report, Migration, displacement and education: Building bridges, not walls.

In 2017, there were an estimated 258 million people living outside their country of origin. Of them, about 30 million were school-aged. Migrants include different groups such as refugees, asylum seekers, migrant workers, stateless, undocumented migrants and internal displaced persons. The right to education of migrants, irrespective of their legal or migration status, is guaranteed under international law on the basis of the human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination. The main treaties guaranteeing the right to education apply to all migrants. In addition, migrant-specific treaties include provisions on the right to education. This international legal framework applies only to the extent that states have committed to it. At national level, migrants face legal and practical barriers to effectively enjoying their right to education. Some states show good examples of protecting the right to education of migrants in law and in practice.

 

The SMM has been monitoring the ability of children on both sides of the contact line in Donetsk and Luhansk regions to attend classes and enjoy a safe and secure school environment since 2015. In the report, the SMM presents its observations related to damage to educational buildings due to shelling and gunfire; dangers posed by mines and UXO; educational facilities used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces or the armed formations or where positions and equipment are close to educational facilities; hardships faced by children and educational staff; and impediments to the SMM’s access to information on educational facilities. The report covers the SMM’s observations from 1 January 2015 until 31 March 2020. 

This report, produced by Mwatana for Human Rights (Mwatana), examines attacks on and impacting schools and education facilities between March 2015 and December 2019 by the warring parties in Yemen. The report does not cover many other attacks and abuses that have killed, wounded and otherwise harmed school- age children during the conflict, which have ranged from airstrikes that have killed or wounded dozens of young children, to recruitment and use of school-age children across Yemen

This report highlights the right to education in Iraq and different barriers that iraqis and internally displaced persons are facing to access education. It put a particular emphasis on the legacy of ISIL territorial control on access to education.

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