The efficient design and delivery of early childhood policies and services are critical to ensuring long-term learning opportunities and improved learning, behaviour, employment, and health outcomes amongst individuals. Research in neuroscience, developmental psychology and cognitive science has revealed that quality early childhood education, supportive communities and a positive family environment serve as important building blocks to promote healthy development amongst infants and toddlers.

The World Health Organization identified the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, and by February 2021, two-thirds of LMICs were reported to have reduced their public education budgets (Education Finance Watch Report, 2021). Although many challenges to achieving full access to quality early childhood services existed before the pandemic, this finding dramatically reveals how the pandemic threatens to erode hard won gains already achieved for children and families, and could continue to have exceedingly negative impacts on child development, early learning, family well-being and all types of early childhood services.

The Global Partnership Strategy (GPS) for Early Childhood was created to counter this negative trend in education and to overcome the reduction and closure of services for health, nutrition, sanitation, and child protection in all world regions. Well designed and implemented policies and services for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) and Early Childhood Development (ECD) enable all countries to protect and guarantee child rights, achieve high rates of return on their investments in child and family development and widen avenues for transforming societies and lives. 

En el presente informe, el Relator Especial sobre la extrema pobreza y los derechos humanos, Olivier De Schutter, observa que a los niños nacidos en familias desfavorecidas se les niega la igualdad de oportunidades: sus posibilidades de alcanzar un nivel de vida decente en la edad adulta disminuyen considerablemente por el mero hecho de que sus padres sean pobres. El Relator Especial examina los canales a través de los cuales se perpetúa la pobreza, en los ámbitos de la salud, la vivienda, la educación y el empleo.

El propio aumento de las desigualdades es un factor importante: cuanto más desiguales son las sociedades, menos permiten la movilidad social, y las desigualdades de riq ueza son especialmente corrosivas en ese sentido. Acabar con los círculos viciosos de la pobreza está a nuestro alcance. Las inversiones en educación y atención a la primera infancia, la educación inclusiva, la provisión de una renta básica universal para los jóvenes, combinada con una mayor fiscalidad de las herencias, y la prohibición de la discriminación por motivos de desventaja socioeconómica son fundamentales para romper los ciclos que perpetúan la pobreza. Las personas en situación de pobreza se enfrentan a una discriminación sistémica en sociedades que siguen estando profundamente segregadas por la riqueza: esto exige remedios sistémicos para superar las divisiones heredadas.

 

ENGLISH  FRANÇAIS

This report, presented to the 76th session of the General Assembly in October 2021, examines the channels through which poverty is perpetuated, in the areas of health, housing, education and employment. The growth of inequalities itself is an important contributing factor: the more unequal societies are, the less they allow for social mobility. The report argues that ending the vicious cycles of poverty is within reach. Investments in early childhood education and care, inclusive education, the provision of a universal basic income for young people combined with an increased taxation of inheritance, and the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of socioeconomic disadvantage are key to breaking the cycles that perpetuate poverty. People in poverty face systemic discrimination in societies that remain deeply segregated by wealth: this calls for systemic remedies to overcome inherited divisions.

It features sections on the right to education in relation to poverty, including the right to early childhood care and education, and higher education. 

 

ESPAÑOL   FRANÇAIS

 

Key resource

This Right to Education Initiative brief explores ECCE related content from the reports of UN Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Education published between 1999 and 2021. 

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The present report is submitted to the General Assembly pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 8/4 and 44/3. In the report, the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Koumbou Boly Barry, considers early childhood care and education (ECCE) from a human rights-based perspective, reflecting the multisectoral needs of children and their caregivers.

ECCE combines the education and care requirements of children from birth to 8 years of age. The concept demonstrates that the right to education is indivisible from the rights to health, housing, food, water and sanitation, as well as cultural rights, among others. While the importance of ECCE has been widely recognized in humanitarian and developmental fields, it has been insufficiently codified in human rights law. The Special Rapporteur considers the human rights-based aspects of ECCE and recommends the creation of a human rights instrument on ECCE.

 

FRANÇAIS     ESPAÑOL     ARABIC

The final report of outgoing UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Ms Koumbou Boly Barry, addressing the right to early childhood care and education (ECCE), highlights the wide ranging ‘developmental, educational, social, cultural and economic benefits’ of ECCE to children, their families and wider society, and urges states to recognise and enshrine ECCE rights from birth until primary school, significantly calling for a more specific legal instrument to be established to complement the protections already established in international human rights instruments.

This report reflects a milestone in the realisation of young children’s right to education, and thus paves the way for long-term change and improvement to education systems, entrenched inequalities, and cohesive social development.

We wish to offer our sincere thanks to the outgoing Special Rapporteur Koumbou Boly Barry and acknowledge her for giving precedence to the right to education of young children in her report, and also for the overall contribution towards the realisation of the right to education during her mandate.

This statement synthesises some of the key information contained in the outgoing Special Rapporteur's report, and acknowledges her contribution across the two terms of her mandate. 

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There is undisputed recognition of the critical importance of the first years of a child’s life for development and that ensuring access to quality Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) provides tremendous benefits throughout life. Yet, despite progress made in recent years, the most disadvantaged continue to face considerable challenges in accessing quality and inclusive early childhood programmes and services with great disparities within and across countries.
 
The expanding digital environment and the wide-ranging modes of ECCE settings, further underline the need for greater state guidance.Perhaps more so than any other age group, children, from birth to the age of eight, require legal and policy measures that ensure a holistic, integrated and multisectoral approach, as not only are they highly dependent on their parents and caregivers, but their education, health, care and development are all firmly interconnected, making the realization of ECCE rights particularly complex.
 
Besides, as the right to education begins at birth and continues throughout life, adopting a lifelong learning approach has now become a fundamental right from the early years, including through ensuring equitable access to quality, free and compulsory pre-primary education.By adopting a rights-based approach, this thematic report aims to unravel the existing rights and obligations that states should comply with while evaluating how, in light of today's challenges, the right to ECCE can be further protected in the international human rights framework and national education systems. ECCE is a human right yet significant inequalities persist in terms of access to quality services with those who would benefit most often excluded.
 
This Thematic Report was published in the context of the World Conference on Early Childhood Education and Care 2022 and is the result of a fruitful collaboration between UNESCO, the Right to Education Initiative (RTE), Human Rights Watch (HRW), the World Organization for Early Childhood Education (OMEP), the Oxford Human Rights Hub (Oxford University), the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education (OHCHR), and the Latin American Campaign for the Right to education (CLADE).

 

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The Tashkent Declaration was adopted on 16 November during the UNESCO World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education.

 

FRANÇAIS    ESPAÑOL

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RTE se félicite de l'appel lancé par la Déclaration de Tachkent en faveur d'un cadre juridique renforcé et d'une augmentation des dépenses publiques pour l'EPPE. Cette déclaration a été rédigée par RTE suite à l'adoption de la " Déclaration de Tachkent et des engagements d'action pour la transformation de l'éducation et de la protection de la petite enfance " lors de la Conférence mondiale de l'UNESCO sur l'éducation et la protection de la petite enfance. 
 
Cette déclaration résume les aspects les plus significatifs de la Déclaration de Tachkent et nos perspectives sur l'importance de ce document pour la protection des droits des jeunes enfants en matière d'EPPE.
 
 

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