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.
In conflict-affected settings, children’s access to education is severely disrupted by attacks on schools and their military use, with girls and female teachers facing unique and heightened risks. Over the 2014-2018 period, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) documented direct attacks on female students and teachers in at least 18 countries, including bombings, abductions, sexual violence, and forced “marriage,” often driven by ideological, religious, or military motives. These attacks have severe long-term consequences for girls, such as loss of education, early marriage, stigma from sexual violence, and socioeconomic disempowerment, exacerbating pre-existing gender inequalities. GCPEA’s study focuses on teh types and couses of abuse aginst female. Inequalities intensify during conflict, leaving women and girls particularly vulnerable. GCPEA conducted this study to better understand the impact of attacks on education for girls and women and to strengthen advocacy for strategies that protect them, prevent such attacks, and reduce their harmful consequences.
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 brief was submitted to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights prior to the 7th Review of the United Kingdom, responding to the pre-sessional Working Group submission. It was submitted in January 2023 and focuses on UK international development cooperation in the area of education. Another report was submitted in 2024 with updates and 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.
What are the impacts of climate crisis and climate displacement on education?
What can countries do to improve the preparedness and resilience to protect the right to education ?
Watch this Side Event at the 79th Commission Session of UN ESCAP jointly organized by UNESCO Bangkok and UN University - Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability at United Nations ESCAP on 17 May 2023.