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In the present report, the Special Rapporteur considers ways in which the right to education contributes to the prevention of atrocity crimes and mass or grave human rights violations. Stressing that education has a key role to play at all stages of prevention, the Special Rapporteur underlines the particularly forceful preventive potential of the right to education in the very early stages, before warning signs are apparent. That role is to be linked with the aims of education and the right to inclusive and equitable quality education, as established in international instruments.

The Special Rapporteur, highlighting circumstances under which schools can become tools for division and lay the groundwork for future violent conflicts, focuses on a number of steps regarding the organization of school systems, pedagogy and the values and skills to be transmitted to learners that are crucial in terms of prevention. She proposes an education framework (known in English as the “ABCDE framework”) that encompasses the interrelated features of education needed in order for the preventive potential of the right to education to be fully deployed. 

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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.

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This paper was commissioned by the Global Education Monitoring Report as background information to assist in drafting the 2019 GEM Report, Migration, displacement and education: Building bridges, not walls.

In 2017, there were an estimated 258 million people living outside their country of origin. Of them, about 30 million were school-aged. Migrants include different groups such as refugees, asylum seekers, migrant workers, stateless, undocumented migrants and internal displaced persons. The right to education of migrants, irrespective of their legal or migration status, is guaranteed under international law on the basis of the human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination. The main treaties guaranteeing the right to education apply to all migrants. In addition, migrant-specific treaties include provisions on the right to education. This international legal framework applies only to the extent that states have committed to it. At national level, migrants face legal and practical barriers to effectively enjoying their right to education. Some states show good examples of protecting the right to education of migrants in law and in practice.

 

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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.

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In this report, the Special Rapporteur sheds light on the vision and concept of lifelong learning and highlights the emergence of the “right to learning”, intertwined with the right to education and training as a social right. He also examines State responsibility, along with that of other social partners, for its realization and underlines the key importance placed on lifelong learning in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Special Rapporteur also looks at the special role that devolves upon technical and vocational education and training for skills development and analyses the issues in financing lifelong learning.

Finally, the Special Rapporteur offers a set of recommendations with a view to promoting learning as a right and its pursuit from a lifelong learning perspective, in keeping with State obligations as set out in international human rights instruments.

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This policy brief on education under covid-19 and beyond highlights the importance of education in just and equitable recoveries. The document is a review of the impacts of the pandemic on education and recommends four key areas of action to implement sustainable education beyond covid-19.


 

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked unprecedented havoc on children, families and communities around the globe, disrupting vital services and putting millions of lives at risk. Since March, attempts to avert the global health crisis have seen nationwide school closures in 194 countries.

This report spotlights one particular vulnerability that is known to be exacerbated by school closures in times of crisis and risks the continued education of vulnerable children: teenage pregnancy. World Vision estimates that as many as one million girls across sub-Saharan Africa may be blocked from returning to school due to pregnancy during COVID-19 school closures.

Read this report, to learn about some of the girls who will be impacte and find additional information on both the problem as well as proposed solutions.

For further information see ActionAid's landmark webinar and call to action on the domestic financing of education post-Covid-19

The SMM has been monitoring the ability of children on both sides of the contact line in Donetsk and Luhansk regions to attend classes and enjoy a safe and secure school environment since 2015. In the report, the SMM presents its observations related to damage to educational buildings due to shelling and gunfire; dangers posed by mines and UXO; educational facilities used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces or the armed formations or where positions and equipment are close to educational facilities; hardships faced by children and educational staff; and impediments to the SMM’s access to information on educational facilities. The report covers the SMM’s observations from 1 January 2015 until 31 March 2020. 

This report, produced by Mwatana for Human Rights (Mwatana), examines attacks on and impacting schools and education facilities between March 2015 and December 2019 by the warring parties in Yemen. The report does not cover many other attacks and abuses that have killed, wounded and otherwise harmed school- age children during the conflict, which have ranged from airstrikes that have killed or wounded dozens of young children, to recruitment and use of school-age children across Yemen

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