This report is the first of a three-part series addressing the urgent issue of access to education for Syrian refugee schoolchildren in Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon. The series will examine the various barriers preventing Syrian children from accessing education and call on host governments, international donors, and implementing partners to mitigate their impact in order to prevent a lost generation of Syrian children.
In countries across the globe from Afghanistan to Colombia to India to Mali to Turkey to Yemen and on, students, teachers, and educational facilities are under siege. Targeted killings, rape, abduction, child recruitment, intimidation, threats, military occupation, and destruction of property are just some of the ways in which education is being attacked.
Between 2013 and 2017, there were more than 12,700 attacks, harming more than 21,000 students and educators in at least 70 countries. In 28 countries profiled in this report, at least 20 attacks on education occurred over the last 5 years.
This report was submitted by the Right to Education Initiative and nine organisations - including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries and international organisations on the occasion of the 3rd Cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK).
The report argues that the UK is failing to take its extraterritorial human rights obligations seriously by supporting (through the Department for International Development) non-State actors in providing education in developing countries, which in some instances undermines the right to education.
This is a summary of the report submitted in October 2015 to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights by 26 organisations across the world including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries, and international organisations.
Access the original report, here and the update, here.
This is a brief update of the report submitted in October 2015 to the Committee on the Rights of the Child by 26 organisations across the world including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries, and international organisations.
This is a summary of the report submitted in October 2015 to the Committee on the Rights of the Child by 26 organisations across the world including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries, and international organisations.
The Right to Education Initiative, with the support of international and British organisations as well as teachers' unions have submitted a report to the Committee onEconomic, Social and Cultural Rights about the UK's support of the growth of private actors in education through its development aid: questioning its responsibilities as regards its human rights extra-territorial obligations.
The report raises concern about the increased use of British aid money to support for-profit schools, in particular so-called ‘low-fee’ private schools, which are fuelling inequality, creating segregation and undermining the right to education.
The report finds that the UK’s policies in support of private education through its development aid are problematic and that the country could be violating its extra-territorial obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in two regards:
- Firstly, the UK’s support for for-profit, fee-charging private schools that do not reach the poorest is questioned in light of the UK’s obligations to fulfil the right to education, including the right to free quality education without discrimination;
- Secondly, the UK’s responsibility is questioned in particular in relation to its own impact assessments that have been conducted on its policies of providing support to private schools and which have concluded that projects supporting private education providers are less likely to target the most marginalised, and that more research needs to be carried out on the impact of private schools in developing countries on, among other elements, the efficiency of “low-fee” private schools.
À l’occasion de la Semaine de la langue française et de la Francophonie, un réseau d’organisations francophones de la société civile, dont le Right to Education Initiative s’est mobilisé contre la marchandisation de l’éducation, le 15 mars 2016, au siège de l’Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). Ceci est le rapport de cette journée de conférence.
This is a brief update of the report submitted in October 2015 to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights by 26 organisations across the world including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries, and international organisations.