Corpus of the Right to Education

Organization(s): OIDEL
Author: Alfred Fernandez, Diletta Tandoi, Laetitia Faure-Desmoulins, Marika Ison, Pierre Derivaz
Year: 2017
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This compilation of international standards contains the provisions which appear in the right to education norms under concepts taken from the international instruments of the United Nations, UNESCO and ILO. Thus, this study concerns exclusively the universal system. Its aim is to give an exhaustive vision of the international right on education and also facilitate a better understanding of this right. It completes the work OIDEL has been doing since a couple of years on tools including the bibliography on the right to education that we regularly publish.

The consolidation of the provisions is closely following the structure of article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This treaty, which has been the subject of many ratifications, represents the most comprehensive instrument on the right to education; this explains our decision to follow this methodology. The first part, entitled “Right to education in general,” lists the provisions based on subparagraphs of article 13, namely subparagraph 1: Goals of the education, subparagraph 2: Levels of education, subparagraphs 3 and 4: Freedom of education. The standards making explicit mention of certain types of education, these are in sub-sections within the categories to which they relate.

The second part deals with the “rights of specific groups” that have significantly developed in the recent decades, namely the education of women and girls, children and minorities. In international standards, the right to education is put in direct relation with certain other rights. We considered it useful to create a section called “link with other rights” as the cultural rights or religious freedom.

The aim of this presentation, which comprises three areas, is to facilitate research on the right to education offering a tool for three different publics: governments and public authorities in general, other stakeholders of this right at the national and international level and university students and members of academia. The final purpose is to strengthen the protection of the right to education at the national level and facilitate the human rights – based approach in education.

Finally, the international texts are included in the compilation, in their entirety or in the form of articles referring to education. They are classified by organization, i.e. UN, UNESCO, and ILO and, within each institution, by types of instruments (Convention, Declaration and Recommendation). That way, the reader has the original texts of all the instruments at hand for immediate reference.

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Universality of Protection

States parties to major human rights instruments related to economic, social and cultural rights such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) have an immediate minimum core obligation to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum essential levels of all economic, social and cultural rights such as the right […]

Social Protection and Human Rights