In this general comment, the Committee on the Rights of the Child emphasizes the urgent need to address the adverse effects of environmental degradation, with a special focus on climate change, on the enjoyment of children’s rights, and clarifies the obligations of States to address environmental harm and climate change. The Committee also explains how children’s rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child apply to environmental protection, and confirms that children have a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
In 2018, 17.2 million people were internally displaced as a result of natural disasters (IDMC 2019). Just one year later, in 2019, 24.9 million people were displaced due to natural disasters and extreme weather events (IDMC 2020). The catastrophic effects of climate change are no longer isolated emergencies, but have become the new global norm- a reality that is only intensifying each year. Yet the literature regarding climate change has little to no information on the specific nexus between climate displaced and their right to education.
Persons displaced by the effects of climate change face significant vulnerabilities with regard to accessing education: saturated school capacity, destroyed infrastructure, linguistic barriers, difficulties to have past qualifications recognized, discrimination, and more. This is why UNESCO commenced a new initiative: the Impact of Climate Displacement on the Right to Education. This is explored throughout this working paper.
This document provides an overview of the provisions of the international human rights framework linking the right to education with issues related to the environment and climate change.
This guide 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 (RTE) 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.
This guide focuses on early childhood care and education (ECCE) and aims to provide human rights indicators and guidance for those advocating to ensure young children’s right to ECCE are guaranteed, respected and implemented. This guide is designed to explain and simplify the ECCE monitoring process. It includes a set of human rights indicators based on the international human rights law framework which will assist in gathering data, and in the subsequent generation of evidence on the violation of the rights of young children to have free and quality access to ECCE. This guide also encourages a democratic and participatory ECCE monitoring process.
This document lists the international instruments that refer to the right to education of early childhood care and education (ECCE).
Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are often presented as a miracle solution to the lack of funding in education. This policy brief, based a longer and more developed working paper, shows that these arrangements often generate higher hidden costs and widen educational inequalities.
It aims to support more informed and strategic decision-making regarding public-private partnerships in education, protect public resources, improve policy implementation and enhance accountability.
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
In October 2024, the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, presented her report on AI in education, emphasiaing a human rights-based approach to its regulation. She showed AI's potential to advance access to education, particularly for individuals with disabilities and remote communities, while cautioning against its risks, such as undermining human connection, increasing digital divides, and excluding minority groups. The report calls for legal and political frameworks, inclusive stakeholder participation, and training for educators and students to ensure the responsible use of AI. She stressed that AI must not replace teachers and warned against the commercialisation of education, urging states to integrate AI responsibly into educational systems. She emphasises the need for international collaboration, ethical guidelines, and addressing algorithmic biases to align AI with the goal of equitable, quality education for all.