This online library provides resources from the Right to Education Initiative as well as from other partner organisations. You can filter relevant resources by topic, region, country, content type and language. Note that resources in other languages will be available soon.

See also our list of useful databases for information on the implementation of the right to education at national level.

The Arab Charter on Human Rights was adopted on 22 May 2004 by the Council of the League of Arab States. It reaffirms the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and therefore, the right to education.

Article 41 guarantees the right to education and obliges States Parties to eradicate illiteracy. It provides for free compulsory primary education. It defines the aims of education and refers to human rights education. It also guarantees on-going education and adult education.

Article 40 is specifically on the right to education of persons with disabilities.

In 2009, India enacted the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, which provides for free and compulsory education to all children aged 6 to 14. However, the evidence presented in this report indicates that despite the 3 year deadline to implement the key provisions of the Act, it has yet to be adequately implemented.

This lack of implementation, enforcement and monitoring particularly affects children from marginalised groups, such as children with disabilities, girls, and Da lits. Children from these groups are excluded and discriminated against, affecting access, participation, retention, achievement, and completion of elementary education.

This report examines the obstacles preventing certain children from attending school and the government’s failure to take the steps necessary to address the problem.

This publication includes an overview of key right to education decisions made by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, and the UN Human Rights Committee. They are judgments that have taken place in these courts from 1988 to 2014 and deal with the fulfilment of the right to education for various groups, such as people with disabilities, migrants, persons deprived of liberty and Indigenous Peoples.

The Summaries of Jurisprudence series has been published since 2010. This recent publication is available for download via the following websites  (in both Spanish and English):

CEJIL: http://cejil.org/publicaciones/sumarios-de-jurisprudencia-derecho-a-la-educacion

CLADE: http://www.campanaderechoeducacion.org/v2/en/publications/clade/studies.html

 

Early childhood education has the potential to expand opportunities for disadvantaged children, provided that programmes use inclusion as a guiding principle. While the international community has committed to inclusive education, countries vary in their efforts to extend this goal to early childhood. Universal access is the basis of inclusion, and countries must address barriers related to socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender, language, disability and remoteness. Cooperation among multiple actors to identify special needs early and provide integrated services is needed, as are inclusive curricula that support children’s socioemotional development and identity formation. Finally, educators must be given the knowledge, training, and support to implement inclusive practices and work with families from all backgrounds.

 

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Key resource

Treaty bodies are committees of independent experts created under a particular UN treaty. They are mandated to monitor how the states which have ratified the treaty in question comply with their obligations to implement the human rights guaranteed by the treaty, including the right to education. They periodically examine state reports and issue concluding observations on states’ compliance with the treaty, including recommendations.

The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the UN Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the UN Committee on Civil and Political Rights (CCPR) have covered issues related to higher education in their concluding observations. This document compiles their concerns and recommendations for the period 2016-2021. It is organised by UN treaty Bodies with states listed in alphabetical order.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in article 24 seeks to combat discrimination of children with disabilities in the field of education by prescribing a model of social inclusion. This paper will critically examine the sociological concept of inclusion, the German experience in implementing article 24 and the limitations of article 24 vis à vis the Right to Education in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Before turning to the situation in Germany it is beneficial to discuss underlying concepts relating to special need education in order to clarify the notion of inclusion. In doing so, contested medical concepts, the perception of education as end rather than means and the voicelessness of the child, all lead to the conclusion that a rights-based approach is advantageous in acquiring social justice. Moreover, looking at the case of Germany and a school system with an exclusion rate of 82% the delay in the public discourse about inclusion is particularly striking. Hence, section 3 will look at empirical data, the UN definition of education and elaborate on the German confusion of inclusion and integration by making reference to domestic law and an exemplary case along with relating the Monitoring Body’s guidelines of availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability to the action plan of North Rhine-Westphalia. Finally, the application of social inclusion maxims to anti-discrimination law demands significant, positive adjustments but is also restricted by its focus on absolute disadvantage. The convention is arguably limited because of its narrow outlook owed to its civil and political nature and inclusive reform might bring broader equality when applied to the a priori Right to Education from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Key resource

In this report, the Special Rapporteur shows that non-formal education programmes provide flexible, learner-centred means to improve education outcomes. This is particularly relevant for girls and groups in vulnerable situations, including children with disabilities, minorities and rural and impoverished children, who are disproportionately represented among out-ofschool populations. When designed to be available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable, such programmes enable States to fulfil the right to education of learners who are excluded from the formal system. Furthermore, such programmes can promote holistic learning objectives that support cultural and linguistic rights.

Finaly, the Rapporteur calls upon States to recognize non-formal education as a flexible, cost-effective mechanism that can provide quality education and that can help States to meet their obligations in connection with the right to education.

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The Danish Institute for Human Rights has developed a human rights guide to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The guide goes through all 17 goals and 169 targets to uncover their human rights anchorage, as well as the underlying indicators' human rights adequacy.

This document details the human rights standards for goal four, the education goal, as well as the standards related to the targets.

The guide enables actors to use human rights as a driver for realising the SDGs – and to use the SDGs to realise human rights.

Useful insights for all relevant stakeholders

The guide provides useful insights for governments, UN agencies, National Human Rights Institutions and NGOs. Rights-holders directly addressed in the SDGs eg, women, persons with disabilities, youth, workers, indigenous peoples and business will also find helpful insights.

The guide helps:

  • States to incorporate the SDGs in their human rights reporting
  • To choose the right indicators for the SDG targets
  • To influence national-level implementation strategies and follow-up and review processes
  • To build capacity of NHRIs, major groups, business and others to lead a human rights-based approach to the realisation of SDGs.

How the guide works

The guide is meant as a reference work, where you can look up the human rights implication of a given goal, target or indicator.

Based on the analysis of 45 countries, which represent 85 per cent of global GDP and close to 60 per cent of the global population and workforce, this microeconomic simulation study provides an estimation of the employment generation in care sectors, including early childhood care and education, primary and secondary education, tertiary education, ill/patient care (short-term care) and long-term care for older persons and persons with disabilities. By estimating levels of required expenditure, the potential expansion of employment in education and health and social work is considered under a high road scenario and a status quo scenario. The status quo scenario is developed to keep the current coverage rates, quality standards and working conditions constant, based on the idea that there would be no change in the policy environment. On the other hand, the high road scenario builds on relevant targets set by the Sustainable Development Goals, including Goal 4 on quality education, among others.

 
 

This comprehensive report presents the results of the Ninth Consultation of UNESCO’s Member States on the implementation of UNESCO’s Convention and Recommendation against Discrimination in Education. Launched in 2016, this consultation involved 67 UNESCO Member States. The information contained in the national reports generally provides an extremely valuable resource for research and analysis, experience-and knowledge-sharing, and ultimately advocacy.

An interesting finding of the report is that countries seized on this periodic reporting exercise as a valuable opportunity to outline the challenges they face and to take stock of progress and reflect on how to overcome difficulties. The report highlights that the challenges are often crosscutting and intersectoral, making them more difficult to address.

In particular, the report points out serious challenges with regard to equity and inclusion. Socio-economic factors, poverty, ethnicity, location and gender account for significant patterns of discrimination and exclusion in education. Persistent harmful practices and attitudes stand in the way of many children and adults and deprive them of meaningful educational opportunities.

Difficulties relating to the quality of education were equally widely shared by countries, along with budgetary constraints and sometimes lack of governance, coordination and monitoring capacities.

The report also exemplifies the various measures adopted at the national level to ensure that education is provided to all in a discrimination-free environment. The report notably shares the positive measures reported by countries to guarantee inclusion in education, notably for girls and women, refugees, persons with disabilities and indigenous peoples, which is critical to advance SDG4.

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