This background paper was commissioned by the Global Education Monitoring Report team to assist in the drafting the 2018 GEM Gender Review: Accountability in education: Meeting our commitments to gender equality in education.

This paper firstly sets out the legal and political frameworks on gender equality in education to which states have committed and then describes how they have committed.

In the second section, the content of states’ commitments to achieve gender equality in education is explained, including the normative content of relevant provisions found in international and regional human rights treaties and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This section also includes a classification of states according to what legal commitments to women and girls’ right to education they have made.

The final section details how states can be held accountable for failure to meet their legal commitments to gender equality in education, including what mechanisms are available and examples of how these mechanisms have been used to hold states accountable.

Year of publication: 
2018
Author(s): 
Right to Education Initiative
Publisher(s): 
UNESCO
Resource type: 
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