Right to Education

School meals play a critical role in children’s lives. They are an essential intervention in development and humanitarian contexts, proven to have long-lasting impacts across multiple Sustainable Development Goals and sectors, including food security, nutrition and health, education, water and sanitation, child protection, gender equality, and prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse. They are at the juncture of the right to food, the right to health and the right to education.

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.

يعرض هذا التقرير الأنشطة الرئيسية التي اضطلع بها المقرر الخاص المعني بحقوق الإنسان للمهاجرين ، فيليبي غونزاليس موراليس ، خلال الفترة المشمولة بالتقرير. في التقرير ، يسلط المقرر الخاص الضوء على تحديات حقوق الإنسان التي يواجهها المهاجرون الذين هم في وضع غير قانوني من خلال تقديم تحليل حول كيفية زيادة المخالفات في التعرض لانتهاكات حقوق الإنسان. ويناقش كيفية معالجة حالات ضعف المهاجرين بسبب الافتقار إلى وضع الهجرة النظامية من خلال إنشاء وتعزيز آليات تسوية الأوضاع.

The present report outlines the main activities undertaken by the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe González Morales, during the reporting period. In the report, the Special Rapporteur highlights the human rights challenges faced by migrants in an irregular situation by providing an analysis on how irregularity increases vulnerability to human rights violations. He discusses how to address situations of vulnerability of migrants due to a lack of regular migration status by creating and strengthening regularization mechanisms.

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly accelerated the use of digital technologies in education. But beyond the emergency response, there is an international trend towards exploring how artificial intelligence and data-based analytics can support learning, learning assessments, and evidence-based policy planning processes. The use of data in education is a double-edged sword.

In her 2022 Report on the impact of the digitalisation of education on the right to education, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education clarified that any introduction of digital technologies in education must be framed around the right of every person to public, free, quality education and the commitments of states in this regard both under international human rights law and Sustainable Development Goal 4.

This written statement was submitted by GI-ESCR and RTE during the 53rd session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. It was submitted in relation to the presentation of the report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to education: Securing the right to education: advances and critical challenges (A/HRC/53/27).

Resolution A/HRC/53/L.10 on the right to education was adopted during the 53rd ordinary session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, between 19 June and 14 July 2023. 

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While South Africa has seen important advances in the provision of early childhood care and education (ECCE), about 3.2 million children still lack access to any programme. Problems of access and quality are most pronounced in the poorest communities. Even before Covid-19 forced many providers to close, these programmes were overcrowded, with poor infrastructure, and an under-paid and under-qualified workforce. ECCE is crucial for a child’s development, meaning that these inequalities are amplified in school and later life.

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In her first report to the Human Rights Council, 25 years after the establishment of the mandate on the right to education, the Special Rapporteur reviews achievements, particularly on how the right to education is understood today and the obligations it entails, as well as contemporary and emerging issues that need to be considered to ensure the right to education for all, today and in the future.

A/HRC/53/27