The right to education as developed in the international human rights law framework.

 

This Section delves into a detailed examination of the right to education within the international human rights law framework. This includes an analysis of key State legal obligations as well as other relevant international commitments, such as soft law instruments and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

 State legal obligations 

The right to education and its components is legally guaranteed for all, without discrimination, by international human rights law instruments that ratifying countries are to comply with. The CADE is the first instrument to define the concrete obligations required for the realization of this right and the ICESCR builds upon the obligations laid out. In addition, several human rights treaties which are dedicated to specific groups of people, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (‘CEDAW’, 1979), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (‘CRC’, 1989) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (‘CRPD’, 2006) reaffirm the right to education for these groups and elaborate on aspects specific to their situation. Please see the Annex for the full list of human rights instruments.

To clarify the legal obligations, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (‘CESCR’) elaborated a framework for the realization of all human rights. With regard to the right to education, States have the obligation to:

◊ Respect: to ensure that the measures taken do not hinder or prevent the enjoyment of the right to education,

◊ Protect: to take measures to prevent that third parties do not interfere with the right to education, and

◊ Fulfil: to take positive measures that fully realize the right to education. States can be held accountable for violations or deprivations of this right. In addition, the fulfilment of the right to education can be assessed using the ‘4 As framework’, which asserts that for education to be a meaningful right it must be available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable.

Other international commitments 

Beyond legally binding instruments, the international community has adopted several soft law instruments and agendas which have a moral and political authority and States, although not obligated, are committed to respecting them. The most recent global political framework is the Sustainable Development Agenda adopted in 2015 which all 193 UN Member States committed to achieve. To unpack Sustainable Development Goal 4 (hereafter SDG 4), the primary goal related to education, the Education 2030 Framework for Action was developed. The Agenda explicitly calls for legal guarantees of at least twelve years of free, and nine years of compulsory, primary and secondary education and additionally one year of free and compulsory pre-primary education. The Agenda addresses ways to ensure the inclusion of all people and is centred on the concept of lifelong learning to effectively realize the right of everyone to education, from birth throughout life. It is important to note, the Education 2030 Framework forAction is time-bound and the deadline to achieve SDG 4 is 2030. Numerous other soft law instruments (which do not legally bind States) cover components of the right to education and will be referred to hereafter as they are relevant to each subsection.