According to UNESCO, 264 million children and youth are still out of school around the world, and this is only accounting for the primary (61 million) and secondary school (203 million) age population. In particular, the poorest and most marginalised, including ethnic and religious minorities, persons with disabilities, girls, and populations experiencing conflict, are often systematically unable to access and complete a full cycle of quality education. The first volume of NORRAG Special Issue (NSI) is dedicated to examining international frameworks and national policy as well as the challenges of fulfilling the right to education in practice.

The inaugural issue of NSI on the Right to Education Movements and Policies: Promises and Realities aims to highlight the global and national level experience and perspective on guaranteeing the right to education, as outlined in international frameworks, national constitutions, legislation, and policy, when creating the required administrative structures to ensure that the right is respected, protected, and fulfilled for all.

The Issue is divided into six parts, each focusing on a specific theme of right to education policy and practice. The first part includes an article written by RTE staff on The Role of Court Decisions in the Realisation of the Right to Education, which draws on RTE's background paper on accountability for the GEM Report 2017-8.

 

This study examines the relationship between institutional autonomy and the security of higher education institutions from violent and coercive attacks. The paper includes a review of the limited literature available, as well as a series of examples illustrating different forms of attacks. These include arrests related to classroom content in Zimbabwe, sectarian divisions in Iraq, impunity for murders of academics in Pakistan, and physical intimidation on campuses in Tunisia. The study suggests that institutional autonomy plays a direct and indirect protective function. It directly helps protect systems of higher education from government interference, making it more difficult for states to act as perpetrators. It also indirectly helps preserve higher education against actual and perceived politicization and ideological manipulation, which in turn might help insulate it from attacks by nonstate parties. The study suggests a framework for examining questions of autonomy and security which in turn suggests a need to develop strategies aimed at increasing autonomy and security simultaneously. This necessarily requires approaches aimed at encouraging states to fulfill their obligations not to engage in or to be complicit in attacks (negative obligations) and obligations to protect higher education from attack and to deter future attacks by holding perpetrators accountable (positive obligations). The study concludes with brief recommendations on how different stakeholders might work to encourage greater understanding and implementation of these obligations, including further research, expert roundtables and information-sharing, development of guidelines and related advocacy campaigns.

Si les données sur les attaques contre l’éducation sont devenues plus largement disponibles grâce à une meilleure prise de conscience et aux efforts des organisations nationales et internationales et des organes de contrôle, des lacunes de données critiques subsistent. Les systèmes de signalement peuvent être absents, médiocres ou déconnectés des réponses efficaces aux attaques contre l’éducation. Les moniteurs, ainsi que les victimes et les témoins, peuvent faire face à des menaces pour leur sécurité, ou l’insécurité peut empêcher les observateurs d’accéder aux zones où des attaques se produisent. De ce fait, un grand nombre d’attaques et incidents d’utilisation militaire ne sont pas signalés, ce qui compromet les efforts de calcul de leur prévalence.

Même lorsqu’il existe des mécanismes de signalement, les données ne sont pas souvent ventilées par genre, âge, lieu, type d’attaque ou auteur. Les violations telles que le recrutement d’enfants et la violence sexuelle par les forces armées ou les groupes armés à l’école ou sur le chemin de l’école sont souvent sous-déclarées. Les impacts des attaques contre l’éducation et de l’usage militaire – comme les jours d’école perdus, les abandons et les fermetures d’écoles – restent difficiles à calculer en raison de ces écarts. Et même lorsque la collecte de données a lieu régulièrement, leur analyse et leur signalement ne se produisent pas toujours à intervalles réguliers. 

Les pages suivantes présentent un Kit pratique pour collecter et analyser les données sur les attaques contre l’éducation exhaustif qui comble les lacunes susmentionnées dans la collecte de données ; favorise la collaboration intersectorielle sur la collecte, l’analyse et la communication des données ; et renforce et harmonise les définitions et les concepts liés aux attaques contre l’éducation.

ENGLISH

While data on attacks on education has become more widely available thanks to better awareness and efforts by national and international organizations and monitoring bodies, critical data gaps remain. Reporting systems may be absent, weak, or disconnected from effective responses to attacks on education. Monitors, as well as victims and witnesses, may face threats to their safety, or insecurity may prevent monitors from accessing areas where attacks occur. As such, many attacks and incidents of military use go unreported, undermining efforts to calculate their prevalence.

Even when reporting mechanisms exist, data is not often disaggregated by gender, age, location, type of attack, or perpetrator. Violations such as child recruitment and sexual violence by armed forces or armed groups at, or en route to, school often go underreported. The impacts of attacks on education and military use – such as school days lost, drop-outs, and school closures – remain difficult to calculate due to such gaps. And even when data collection occurs regularly, its analysis and reporting do not always occur at regular intervals. 

The following pages comprise a comprehensive Toolkit for Collecting and Analyzing Data on Attacks on Education which addresses the abovementioned gaps in data collection; promotes inter-sectoral collaboration on data collection, analysis, and reporting; and strengthens and harmonizes definitions and concepts related to attacks on education.

FRANÇAIS

Key resource

This monitoring guide is designed to help civil society organisations monitor education under attack from a human rights perspective. It will guide you through:

I: the importance of monitoring

II: give you advice on what to look for and how to collect data

III: provide you with a list of indicators you might want to look at

IV: give recommendations on how and who to report to when identifying violations of the right to education. 

It is part of a series of thematic guidance notes providing practical advice on monitoring various aspects of the right to education from a human rights perspective. These guides are based on, and supplement, the Right to Education Initiative’s right to education monitoring guide, which provides a human rights framework for monitoring education and education-related issues, as well as our experiences across various monitoring initiatives that we have undertaken with partners from all over the world. 

See also the sister publication: Education Under Attack: a guidance note for journalists and photographers 

Around the world, higher education communities are overwhelmed by frequent attacks on scholars, students, staff, and their institutions. State and non-state actors, including armed militant and extremist groups, police and military forces, government authorities, off-campus groups, and even members of higher education communities, among others, carry out these attacks, which often result in deaths, injuries, and deprivations of liberty. Beyond their harm to the individuals and institutions directly targeted, these attacks undermine entire higher education systems, by impairing the quality of teaching, research, and discourse on campus and constricting society’s space to think, question, and share ideas. Ultimately, they impact all of us, by damaging higher education’s unique capacity to drive the social, political, cultural, and economic development from which we all benefit.

Through its Academic Freedom Monitoring Project, Scholars at Risk (SAR) responds to these attacks by identifying and tracking key incidents, with the aim of protecting vulnerable individuals, raising awareness, encouraging accountability, and promoting dialogue and understanding that can help prevent future threats. Since 2015, SAR has been publishing Free to Think, a series of annual reports analyzing attacks on higher education communities around the world.

Free to Think 2021 documents 332 attacks on higher education communities in 65 countries and territories. This year was marked by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than five million lives. For higher education, the pandemic continued to disrupt academic activity, keeping many institutions in remote states of operation and suspending most academic travel. For scholars and students, the pandemic also continued to raise questions, concerns, and criticisms about state responses to public health crises, government accountability, and societal inequities. Scholars and students took on these issues in the classroom and more public venues, in-person and online, asserting their academic freedom and their rights to freedoms of expression and assembly. They also responded to acute and more long-standing political conflicts, from Myanmar’s coup to the steady erosion of human rights in Turkey, demanding civilian led government and the protection of fundamental freedoms. Frequently, however, individuals and groups opposed to their questions and ideas sought to silence them.

Key resource

Changes in the media market after the end of the cold war, the development of new technologies and the hindering consequences of multiple economic crises have strengthened collaboration between journalists, photographers, videographers, and NGOs. Media reporting on conflict zones can play an enhanced role in helping civil society organisations (CSOs) to document attacks on education and CSO knowledge and connections could help journalists uncover important stories from the front lines. 

This brief encourages a systematic collaboration focused on collecting and sharing data that may help advance the right to education in emergency situations. It is part of a Right to Education Initiative (RTE) series of briefs designed to help civil society organisations monitor and advocate for the right to education, such as the guide on Monitoring Education Under Attack from a Human Rights Perspective.

A global study of attacks on schools, universities, their students and staff, in 2020 and 2021.

Education is under attack around the world. From Afghanistan to Colombia, Mali to Thailand, students and teachers are killed, raped, and abducted, while schools and universities are bombed, burned down, and used for military purposes.

In 2020 and 2021, there were more than 5,000 reported attacks on education and incidents of military use of schools and universities, harming more than 9,000 students and educators in at least 85 countries. On average, six attacks on education or incidents of military use occurred each day.

In the 28 countries profiled in this report, at least 10 attacks on education occurred over the past 2 years.

Le présent rapport de la Rapporteuse spéciale sur le droit à l’éducation, Farida Shaheed, est soumis à l’occasion du vingt-cinquième anniversaire de la création du mandat relatif au droit à l’éducation. Dans son rapport, la Rapporteuse spéciale passe en revue les résultats obtenus dans le domaine du droit à l’éducation et expose la manière dont on conçoit ce droit et les obligations qui en découlent, ainsi que les questions contemporaines et nouvelles dont il convient de tenir compte pour garantir le droit à l’éducation pour tous, aujourd’hui et à l’avenir.

 

ENGLISH     ESPAÑOL     العربية

Este informe de la Relatora Especial sobre el derecho a la educación, Farida Shaheed, se presenta con ocasión del 25º aniversario del establecimiento del mandato sobre el derecho a la educación. En su informe, la Relatora Especial examina los logros realizados en este ámbito, cómo se entiende el derecho a la educación y las obligaciones que conlleva, así como cuestiones tanto contemporáneas como emergentes que deben tenerse en cuenta para garantizar el derecho a la educación para todos, hoy y en el futuro.

 

ENGLISH     FRANÇAIS      العربية

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