This week, at a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, more than 70 pays from all regions of the world expressed their support for the “ efforts to strengthen the right to education, including enshrining the explicit right to free full secondary education and at least one year of free kindergarten education ».
Luxembourg and the Dominican Republic were the initiators of this statement of support.
Brazil went even further, inviting “ all States to consider the adoption of a new international legal instrument that would formally recognize the right of every child to at least one year of nursery school and to public, inclusive, free and quality secondary education ».
Why was such a declaration necessary? First of all, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – the most widely ratified international human rights treaty – does not explicitly refer to early childhood education and, although it states that primary education should be free and compulsory, it does not explicitly oblige governments to provide free pre-primary or secondary education to all children. However, for children to reach their full potential and thrive in today’s world, free primary education is simply not not sufficient.
At an event the day before, Sierra Leone’s Minister of Education, David Moinina Sengeh, explained in a video that an initiative launched in Sierra Leone in 2018, abolishing tuition and examination fees, had caused an increase in school enrollment of more than one million children in the country. This year, Sierra Leone enshrined these changes in law, guaranteeing 13 years of free education from kindergarten to secondary school.
It is not just governments who are calling for stronger international law on free education: human rights activists and experts, Nobel laureates and, in a open letter of the global civic movement Avaaz, more than half a million people around the world are making a similar call.
A analyse research by Human Rights Watch suggests that the most effective way to strengthen international law on the right to education would be to adopt a fourth additional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Lucia Fry, director of research and policy at the Fonds Malalaposed rhetorically the question of whether extending the international legal framework of the right to education will solve the whole problem.
« Non she replied, but listed three things it would accomplish:
It will be one more support in the virtual edifice that supports the global standard that all children in the world should receive an education. This will give “ momentum ” To the girls “ who face obstacles to open the doors of knowledge “. And it will be a very valuable tool for children, their parents, activists and policy makers in the fight for the right to free education for all.
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2023-06-28 23:16:30
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