Is French Higher Education truly accessible to all, without any discrimination? What are the impacts of the privatization of Higher Education on the right to equal access to Higher Education and quality education for all?
Focusing on the impacts of inequalities based on place of residence, indirect study costs and privatization on the implementation of the right to Higher Education in France, this document illustrates the challenges related to the realization of the right to higher education. Overcoming these hurdles for a country like France could, a priori, be held up as an example to others. Lastly, this report highlights France’s legally binding obligations and potential infringements, especially with regard to its role in financing the Higher Education system.
A Geneva Dialogue on the Right to Education was held on 18 and 19 June 2024 and organized by the Swiss Commission for UNESCO, UNESCO, the University of Geneva, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the REGARD network.
The rich sessions provided an opportunity to examine the trends, challenges, and opportunities related to equitable access to quality education. Discussions focused on the impact of privatization, digitalization, and crises on the right to education, as well as the effectiveness of human rights mechanisms in addressing these 21st-century challenges.
The results of these discussions are published in this synthesis report, highlighting the lessons learned and recommendations for strengthening the right to education.
The report examines Senegal’s mixed record in addressing the problem in the year since a fire ripped through a Quranic boarding school in Dakar housed in a makeshift shack, killing eight boys. After the fire, President Macky Sall pledged to take immediate action to close schools where boys live in unsafe conditions or are exploited by teachers, who force them to beg and inflict severe punishment when the boys fail to return a set quota of money. While important legislation has advanced, authorities have taken little concrete action to end this abuse. The report informs about the regulation of Quranic school and makes recommendations.
This report was submitted to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights for the 7th review of the UK. It is an update of a first report submitted in 2023. It covers:
The major concerns raised by the International Development Committee of the UK Parliament about the UK’s investments as part of Overseas Development Aid (ODA)
The UK’s non-response following findings from investigations by the International Finance Corporation (IFC)’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO)
The absence of UK’s responses to the CESCR’s questions related to UK international development cooperation in the area of education
Update on the UK’s investments in fee-charging private education
Key recommendations
Our 2022 Annual Report includes information about our impact and areas of activity across the year, in addition to details on our strategy, our team and our supporters.
Our work would not be possible without the generous support of our donors, to whom we are immensely grateful.
This report aims to examine the barriers to education as a result of climate change and climate displacement, taking into account the policy implications of heightened human mobility. The comparative analysis contained is based on research undertaken in four regions around the globe (Central America and the Caribbean, Asia-Pacific, South-Eastern Europe and East Africa). The key conclusion of the analysis is that climate change poses direct and indirect threats to the fulfillment of SDG 4 and the right to education in all four regions studied.
Source: UNESCO
This paper lays out four concrete ways in which governments can protect education systems from climate change so that their positive impacts on economic development, poverty alleviation, and social cohesion can be sustained and boosted. These are: (i) education management for resilience; (ii) school infrastructure for resilience; (iii) ensuring learning continuity in the face of climate shocks; and (iv) leveraging students and teachers as change agents. The paper presents an actionable agenda for each of these with operational examples in different contexts.
The present report is submitted to the General Assembly pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 8/4 and 53/7. In the report, the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Farida Shaheed, addresses the crucial role and rights of teachers, their contribution to the full realization of the right to education and the challenges that this presents.
The present report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Farida Shaheed, examines the right to academic freedom from a right to education perspective. It proposes considering academic freedom an autonomous human right grounded in several provisions of international law.
The Special Rapporteur proposes to define the right to be safe in education as the right of learners, educators and non-teaching staff to be protected from any violation of their physical, sexual or psychoemotional integrity, as well as from practices that might harm or endanger healthy relationshis within and outside the educational environment and the free expression of identities, in all educational spaces and processes, including digital ones. Safety entails every person being able to enjoy and exercise their human rights in all aspects of education, without discrimination, fear or reprisal