The Convention relating to the Status of Refugees guarantees specifically the right to education of refugees in its Article 22.
The Kampala Convention is the first international treaty, adopted at regional level (Africa), that protect internally displaced persons. It binds governments to provide legal protection for the rights and well-being of those forced to flee inside their home countries due to conflict, violence, natural disasters, and other human rights abuses. Article 9.2 (b) refers to education.
Domestic work is an important occupation for millions of individuals. Women make up the overwhelming majority of these workers.
Noting the omission of express references to either domestic work or domestic workers in a broad range of national and international frameworks of law, the Committee
on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families issued a general comment in order to provide States with guidance on how to implement
their obligations under the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and the Members of Their Families.
Paragraphs 14, 57 and 59 refer to the right to education.
Francis M. Deng, the Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons (1992-2004), developped these guidelines in 1998. It is a set of 30 recommendations, which define who Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are, outline the large body of existing international law protecting people’s basic rights, and describe the responsibility of states. Although not legally binding, they constitute a comprehensive minimum standard for the treatment of IDPs and are being applied by a growing number of states and institutions. They may also help empower IDPs themselves by providing them with information about their rights as citizens of their own country. Principle 23 is about the right to education.
The Action plan of the Djibouti Declaration for Refugee Education of the IGAD outlines the actions to be carried out in the delivery of quality education and learning outcomes for refugees, returnees and host communities in the region.
The Djibouti Declaration of the Regional Ministerial Conference on Refugee Education is a non binding legal instrument produced by the IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development) in 2017, it has eight member states: Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda and Eritrea.
The declaration states the commitments of member states to implement and develop quality educational standards and inclusion in their national legal framework and educational system, it is accompanied by an Action Plan, which outlines the actions to be carried out in the delivery of quality education and learning outcomes for refugees, returnees and host communities in the region.
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.
The Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE, by its Spanish acronym) is a pluralistic network of civil society organizations with a presence in 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, which promotes social mobilization and political advocacy to defend the human right to education. This collection of articles, essays and statements reflect on the vital role of public education in the region and the fault lines exposed by the pandemic, considering both the challenges public education in Latin America faces and possible solutions, alternatives and ways forward.