On 7 July 2014, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) held a General Discussion on the Right to Education for Girls and Women, the aim of which is to commence the Committee’s process of elaborating a “General Recommendation on girls’/women’s right to education.” Angela Melchiorre, who is Right to Education Project adviser, gave a keynote presentation on rights through education.

The right to education in international human rights law is contained in number of international treaties. The most comprehensive coverage of the right is found within the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) under articles 13 and 14. The primary level of education is an essential and integral phase in the development of a child, without the right to education children are unable to realize other rights. This research assesses the functionality of the Egyptian primary education system and its compliance with the international human rights standards of education, specifically the utilizing the 4-A schematic. The indicators included in the 4-A system are defined and analyzed in accordance to the primary level of education. A brief modern history of the Egyptian education system is provided in order to understand current trends. The issues facing the Ministry of Education â are centralization, aid for education and social and economic gaps â and their analysis provides greater insight into the compliance of the state. The final section of this research measures and analyzes the Egyptian system with the international standards in direct correlation to the human rights indicators that comprise the 4-A schematic. There are pockets of defacto discrimination, mostly social-economic that exists within the Egyptian primary education system and by international standards these facets of discrimination should take the highest priority for reform for the Ministry of Education. Other elements detracting from the provision of the right to education includes the quality of education in Egypt and equality. Stronger educational policies that are sharply focused, with targets for implementation being set; comprehensive legislation; and greater levels of awareness and civic engagement are needed in order to protect the right to education at the primary education level.

In July 2010, the Right to Education Project convened a consultative workshop, Beyond statistics: measuring education as a human right, with the aim to explore reactions from human rights, development and education experts on its set of indicators and its use in the field. This document presents the reflections and comments that emerged from the consultation.

This two-days training module seeks to uncover how the right to education may be impacted by privatisation and explores methods for challenging privatisation that negatively impacts education rights. This document serves as the facilitator’s main module notes and should be used with the presentation slides. It contains a session-by-session breakdown of activities, including presentations, discussion questions, and group exercises. At the end of this session participants will have gained an awareness of:

  1. Develop an understanding of the right to education
  2. Become familiar with the key State obligations concerning the right to education that may be affected by privatisation
  3. Gain an understanding of education privatisation, including the forms and processes that may impact the right to education
  4. Practically apply the right to education to scenarios and consider the implications
  5. Explore strategies for applying a human rights based approach to education privatisation

PowerPoint presentation used for the official launch of the Right to Education Monitoring Guide and Indicators Selection Tool at the UCL Institute of education - with notes. 

Key resource
The Right to Education Initiative (RTE) developed over 200 indicators, based on international human rights law, intended to be used as a tool to evaluate States’ progress towards the full realisation of the right to education, to identify violations of the right to education, and to enable civil society to hold governments to account for their obligations regarding education.  The indicators serve as a foundation for RTE’s work – both as a means for promoting monitoring and advocacy with civil society and as a tool that is imbedded throughout RTE’s work more generally.

This thesis aims at a better understanding of the challenging right to education emergence, often embedded within “social rights” or “debts” categories. This study is performed through the demonstration that the positive aspects of education are usually grasped using indirect references like the education public service and two civil liberties: education and conscience. These references remain the norm today despite the reality of the existence of a right to education since its supranational recognition and the recasting of education within the french domestic law. The conditions allowing for this new approach are studied. Furthermore the hypothesis of a gendered meaning of this right's absence within the French secularism context is developed.  

Letter written by 523 NGOs, including RTE, to the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urging them to schedule country reviews no later than 2021 in the context of Covid-19. We indicate that we support online/hybrid reviews during the pandemic and ask for clear and advanced communications to civil society.
 
The letter is available in English, French, Spanish and Russian (all in the attached document). It was prepared by TB-Net, together with Amnesty International and International Service for Human Rights.

 

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