On July 12, the United Nations Human Rights Council reaffirmed its recognition of the Abidjan Principles on the right to education, urging States to act against commercialisation of education, and requested the UN to work with the Global Partnership for Education to implement it.
This statement, signed by 25 civil society organisations, highlights the connection between GPE, which is the main multilateral funding organisation for education, and human rights. It stresses that collaboration between GPE, as a harmonised funding body, and UNESCO and OHCHR, as human rights and policy organisations, could be essential to ensure that human rights are translated from commitments to effective education programming. In particular, UNESCO recently designed a series of tools to support States in addressing the right to education in educational planning and management, which could help bridge this gap. The signing organisations will be engaging with these institutions and are committed to working with them to support the practical use of the right to education in education sector planning and implementation, in accordance with the resolution.
When working on human rights issues, you should consider a person’s right to decide whether they want to be featured in written, recorded or audiovisual work.
It is an ethical consideration which protects individuals from exploitation. It is also a legal requirement: in many countries you cannot share, store or publish content if consent has not been obtained.
This list contains 51 indicators relevant to the monitoring of education under attack. They are divided into four sections - Attacks on schools and universities; Attacks on students, teachers and other educational personnel; Military use of schools and universities; and transversal or cross cutting indicators, which apply to more than one category and that are crucial to the analysis from a human rights’ perspective.
Each indicator is accompanied by comments and supplementary detail.
In recent decades, governments have made considerable efforts to provide education for all. However, a large gap remains between international commitments, such as the Sustainable Development Goal 4, and the actual achievement of inclusive and equitable quality education for all. As a result, certain actors often critique public education as ineffective and inefficient, and thus incapable of addressing this issue. They argue for privatisation as a solution, deeming private providers as more innovative and effective than public ones. However, shortcomings in public education often arise not from lack of capacity, but lack of political will.
This review of examples of public education in low- and middle-income countries shows that, in direct contrast to widely disseminated (and empirically unvalidated) ideas, public education can be highly effective, efficient and transformative and, crucially, it is possible to develop quality public education everywhere.
In recent decades, governments have made considerable efforts to provide education for all. However, a large gap remains between international commitments, such as the Sustainable Development Goal 4, and the actual achievement of equitable quality education for all. As a result, certain actors often critique public education as ineffective and inefficient, and thus incapable of addressing this issue. They argue for privatisation as a solution, deeming private providers as more innovative and effective than public ones. However, shortcomings in public education often arise not from lack of capacity, but lack of political will.
This review of examples of public education in low- and middle-income countries shows that, in direct contrast to widely disseminated (and empirically unvalidated) ideas, public education can be highly effective, efficient, and transformative and, crucially, it is possible to develop quality public education everywhere.
Public education is often critiqued as ineffective and inefficient. However, where shortcomings in public education are identified, they can often be attributed not to lack of capacity, but lack of political will. Reviewing seven examples of public education in developing countries, this research shows that, in direct contrast to widely disseminated ideas, public education can be the most effective, efficient, and transformative approach to education, and, crucially, it is possible to develop quality public education everywhere.
The Right to Education Initiative's Annual Report 2019 includes information about us, the activities we have undertaken as well as our key achievements and impacts in our thematic areas: Privatisation and human rights; Monitoring of the right to education; and the right to education of migrants.
This UNESCO study provides a global overview and an analysis of the adoption of legal provisions for free and compulsory pre-primary education at national level. The analysis, prepared by UNESCO in cooperation with the ‘Right to Education Initiative’, is based on research carried out on qualitative data for 193 UNESCO Member States conducted by UNESCO, and complemented by in-depth research on 17 countries carried out by the ‘Right to Education Initiative’.
This monitoring guide is designed to help civil society organisations monitor education under attack from a human rights perspective. It will guide you through:
I: the importance of monitoring
II: give you advice on what to look for and how to collect data
III: provide you with a list of indicators you might want to look at
IV: give recommendations on how and who to report to when identifying violations of the right to education.
It is part of a series of thematic guidance notes providing practical advice on monitoring various aspects of the right to education from a human rights perspective. These guides are based on, and supplement, the Right to Education Initiative’s right to education monitoring guide, which provides a human rights framework for monitoring education and education-related issues, as well as our experiences across various monitoring initiatives that we have undertaken with partners from all over the world.
See also the sister publication: Education Under Attack: a guidance note for journalists and photographers