In the present report, the Special Rapporteur examines how the right to education, and the commitments made under the Sustainable Development Goals, provide guidance for governance in national education systems. She considers how the right to education should be mainstreamed into education governance. Governance in this context can be thought to include the laws, policies, institutions, administrative procedures and practices, monitoring and accountability mechanisms, and judicial procedures that are related to education. A rights-based approach should be adopted to ensure not only that nondiscrimination and equitable access for all are mainstreamed, but also that learners who have been the hardest to reach, including members of vulnerable groups, are prioritized, even if such decisions run counter to the traditional emphasis on efficiency.
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur reviews the role of equity and inclusion in strengthening the right to education, in particular in the context of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Special Rapporteur concludes by calling for States to take significant, positive actions to tackle discrimination, inequity and exclusion in education to ensure that the Sustainable Development Goals are met.
The report was published in July 2020 by the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Koumbou Boly Barry.
The obligation of States to ensure that educational facilities within their jurisdictions meet human rights standards requires a clear understanding of the synergies between the right to education and other human rights, and ways of further promoting the integration of those rights into practices.
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur on the right to education focuses on the interrelations between the right to education and the rights to water and sanitation, including hygiene and menstrual health and hygiene. She explores situations in which the failure to respect, protect and fulfil the rights to water and sanitation in education institutions impedes the realization of the right to education. She underlines that, conversely, the rights to water and sanitation, like many other human rights, cannot be fully implemented without the realization of the right to education, which enables people’s understanding, agency and autonomy in those areas.
The report contains guidelines for the provision of water and sanitation in educational settings, for the realization of the right to education. The final section of the report contains recommendations for stakeholders.
For more information, you can also consult the factsheet of the report.
The report addresses issues and challenges to the right to education in the digital age, with a focus on higher education. It considers how the norms and principles that underlie the right to education should be upheld while embracing digital technologies. The report concludes with recommendations for ensuring that the use of digital technology in education is in keeping with State obligations on the right to education.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the responses of States thereto have had a very significant impact on the enjoyment of a wide range of social rights. The Council of Europe’s European Social Charter provides a framework for the measures that must be taken by States Parties to cope with the pandemic as it unfolds. The treaty also provides a necessary framework for the post-pandemic social and economic recovery as well as for preparation for and responses to possible future crises of this nature.
With the present statement the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) aims to highlight those Charter rights that are particularly engaged by the COVID-19 crisis. (It does not address the right to protection of health under Article 11 of the Charter, which was the subject of a separate statement adopted in April 20201 ). The statement provides guidance to States Parties, organisations of workers and employers, civil society and other key stakeholders by clarifying certain aspects of the Charter rights in question as they apply in the current crisis.
L’originalité de cette approche consiste à considérer la vie éducationnelle comme une relation vivante entre des acteurs (élèves, éducateurs, organisations et autres acteurs associés) et des ensembles de connaissances qui forment des ressources culturelles communes, porteuses « d’identité, de valeurs et de sens », sans lesquelles les acteurs ne peuvent rien.
In the present report, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolutions 8/4 and 44/3, the Special Rapporteur on the right to education considers the cultural dimensions of the right to education, which are crucial to ensuring that the universal right to inclusive and quality education is realized, as called for in Sustainable Development Goal 4. The Special Rapporteur calls for the right to education to be viewed as a cultural right – that is, as the right of each person to the cultural resources necessary to freely follow a process of identification, to experience mutually rewarding relations his or her life long, to deal with the crucial challenges facing our world and to engage in the practices that make it possible to take ownership of and contribute to these resources.
What is unique about this approach is its conception of educational life as a living relationship between actors (students, educators, organizations and other associated actors) and collections of knowledge that form shared cultural resources, vectors of identity, values and meaning, without which action is impossible.
En este informe, presentado en cumplimiento de las resoluciones 8/4 y 44/3 del Consejo de Derechos Humanos, la Relatora Especial sobre el derecho a la educación examina las dimensiones culturales del derecho a la educación, que son cruciales para lograr la plena efectividad del derecho universal a una educación inclusiva y de calidad, como preconiza el Objetivo de Desarrollo Sostenible 4. En su análisis, la Relatora Especial señala, a partir de numerosas experiencias nacionales, elementos que favorecen el respeto de la diversidad y los derechos culturales de todos en la educación, a saber: a) La valoración de los recursos culturales presentes; c) La descentralización en favor de los actores locales y la dotación de cierta autonomía a las escuelas para garantizar la pertinencia cultural del aprendizaje; d) Los métodos de observación participativa y sistémica; e) El respeto de las libertades en el ámbito de la educación, en particular. La Relatora Especial hace un llamamiento para que el derecho a la educación se considere un derecho cultural en sí mismo, es decir, como el derecho de toda persona a tener acceso a los recursos culturales necesarios para desarrollar libremente su propio proceso de definición de la identidad, tener relaciones dignas de reconocimiento mutuo a lo largo de su vida y afrontar los desafíos cruciales a los que se enfrenta nuestro mundo, así como para participar en las prácticas que le permitan apropiarse de estos recursos y contribuir a ellos.
La originalidad de este enfoque radica en considerar la vida educativa como una relación viva entre los actores (alumnos, educadores, organizaciones y otros actores asociados) y el conjunto de conocimientos que forman los recursos culturales comunes, portadores “de identidad, de valores y sentido”, sin los cuales los actores no pueden hacer nada.