This report examines the right to education of children in detention in thirteen countries: Albania, Belgium, Colombia, Ecuador, Italy, Lebanon, Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Palestine, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Uganda.

This report begins by examining some of the explicit and implicit causes of attacks on girls’ education during peacetime and in situations of crisis, including settings of armed conflict, political instability and widespread criminal violence. It looks at the impact of attacks against girls accessing education on their rights to and within educational systems as well as the broader consequences of these attacks on the promotion and protection of human rights through education by focusing on the linkages between education and a host of other civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. The applicable international legal and policy framework is then outlined and the situation of girls accessing education within settings of crisis, political instability and conflict is analysed in greater detail. The final section of the report provides several recommendations to States and other stakeholders aimed at preventing and redressing violations of girls’ rights to, within and through education.

 

This is a summary of the report submitted in October 2015 to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights by 26 organisations across the world including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries, and international organisations. 

Access the original report, here and the update, here

 

This is a brief update of the report submitted in October 2015 to the Committee on the Rights of the Child by 26 organisations across the world including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries, and international organisations.

Access the original report, here and the summary, here

This is a summary of the report submitted in October 2015 to the Committee on the Rights of the Child by 26 organisations across the world including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries, and international organisations.

Access the original report, here and the update, here.
 

This is a brief update of the report submitted in October 2015 to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights by 26 organisations across the world including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries, and international organisations. 

Access the original report, here and the summary, here

Attacks on education by the insurgent group Boko Haram have caused horrific and long-term suffering for female students and teachers in northeastern Nigeria. Boko Haram has abducted over 600 girls and young women from school during the nine-year conflict, with some held in captivity for years, and many experiencing harmful repercussions long after they return home.

The 106-page report, “‘I Will Never Go Back to School’: Impact of Attacks on Education for Nigerian Women and Girls,” is based on interviews with 119 victims and eyewitnesses of attacks on schools and education, including survivors of the three largest school abductions in Nigeria: Chibok (April 2014), Damasak (November 2014), and Dapchi (February 2018). Women and girls speak out about their terrifying experiences, including forced conversion to Islam, forced “marriage,” rape, and other physical and psychological violence, in the report.

This Report provides an overview of what countries are doing to ensure the right to education for girls and women. Based on the national reports of forty countries from different regions, the Report is organized in a series of country factsheets. Each factsheet contains key statistics on the situation of girls in education in each reporting country, followed by information on each country’s status of ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) and the Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960) as well as information on their constitutional and legislative provisions in this field. They illustrate how countries have made noteworthy advances in addressing gender inequalities and in eliminating discriminatory attitudes towards girls and women in the field of education.

The Report is based on national reports submitted for the Eighth Consultation on the monitoring of the implementation of the Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960) and the Recommendation against Discrimination in Education (1960).

 

Around the world, higher education communities are overwhelmed by frequent attacks on scholars, students, staff, and their institutions. State and non-state actors, including armed militant and extremist groups, police and military forces, government authorities, off-campus groups, and even members of higher education communities, among others, carry out these attacks, which often result in deaths, injuries, and deprivations of liberty. Beyond their harm to the individuals and institutions directly targeted, these attacks undermine entire higher education systems, by impairing the quality of teaching, research, and discourse on campus and constricting society’s space to think, question, and share ideas. Ultimately, they impact all of us, by damaging higher education’s unique capacity to drive the social, political, cultural, and economic development from which we all benefit.

Through its Academic Freedom Monitoring Project, Scholars at Risk (SAR) responds to these attacks by identifying and tracking key incidents, with the aim of protecting vulnerable individuals, raising awareness, encouraging accountability, and promoting dialogue and understanding that can help prevent future threats. Since 2015, SAR has been publishing Free to Think, a series of annual reports analyzing attacks on higher education communities around the world.

Free to Think 2021 documents 332 attacks on higher education communities in 65 countries and territories. This year was marked by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than five million lives. For higher education, the pandemic continued to disrupt academic activity, keeping many institutions in remote states of operation and suspending most academic travel. For scholars and students, the pandemic also continued to raise questions, concerns, and criticisms about state responses to public health crises, government accountability, and societal inequities. Scholars and students took on these issues in the classroom and more public venues, in-person and online, asserting their academic freedom and their rights to freedoms of expression and assembly. They also responded to acute and more long-standing political conflicts, from Myanmar’s coup to the steady erosion of human rights in Turkey, demanding civilian led government and the protection of fundamental freedoms. Frequently, however, individuals and groups opposed to their questions and ideas sought to silence them.