Beyond 2015 is a global campaign aiming to influence the creation of a post 2015 development framework that succeeds the current UN Millennium Development Goals. It brings together some 800 civil society organisations in over 100 countries around the world. This paper, which focuses on education, was drafted by the Global Campaign for Education with the inputs of the Right to Education Project. It takes as a starting point the right to education and pleads for a universal, equitable access to quality education.

The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) position paper on Post-2015 is a result of an extensive consultative process across the Education for All movement, drawing on the thoughts and consultations with national education coalitions. 

This policy paper provides analysis showing that if governments and donors make concerted efforts to meet the promises they made in 2000, basic education for all could be achieved by 2015.

This paper intends to demonstrate the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) role in constraining countries from increasing public expenditure in education to meet the Education For All (EFA) goals and the education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The findings are based on research and country case studies undertaken by ActionAid International offices in Guatemala, Bangladesh, India, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Sierra Leone during 2004-05. These findings are complemented by similar research by the Global Campaign for Education GCE.

 

"Achieving the right to education for all is one of the biggest challenges of our times. The second International Development Goal addresses this challenge: universalizing primary education in all countries by 2015. This is also one of the main objectives set at the World Education Forum (April 2000), where the right to basic education for all was reaffirmed as a fundamental human right.

The fundamental question is how the obligations relating to the right to education undertaken by Member States under international and regional instruments are incorporated into national legal systems? This is all the more important for achieving the Dakar goals, in keeping with the commitments made by Governments for providing education for all, especially free and compulsory quality basic education. But in spite of such legal obligations and political commitments, millions of children still remain deprived of educational opportunities, many of them on account of poverty. They must have access to basic education as of right, in particular to primary education which must be free. Poverty must not be a hindrance and the claim by the poor to such education must be recognized and reinforced."

Over the past two decades, a set of globally converging discourses on lifelong learning (LLL) has emerged around the world. Driven mostly by inter-governmental organisations, these discourses have been largely embraced by national and local education systems seeking to reflect local traditions and priorities. This paper argues that these discourses tend to look remarkably alike, converging into a homogeneous rationale in which the economic dimension of education predominates over other dimensions of learning, and in which adaptation takes pre-eminence
over social transformation as a goal of LLL. It also shows how these converging discourses are embedded in the logic of the knowledge economy, driven by concern for human capital formation as dictated by the changing demands of the global labour market, and can neglect the learning needs and interests of local communities. The paper concludes that the globally converging discourse of LLL tends to serve the interests of the market ahead of those of the community, and argues that an alternative characterisation of LLL, anchored in social justice, is necessary in the light of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and especially Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. 

This article aims at connecting economics, education and gender in the MDGs, inviting world leaders to reaffirm education as a human right and as a major driver of economic and social development. 

Key resource

This paper was prepared for the 2013 UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development for a discussion on using a rights based approach to setting post 2015 education goals. Education is a human right enshrined in a number of international human rights treaties and integrated at the national level through national constitutions, legislation, and policies. The human rights legal framework enunciates international standards that States must adhere to. Both MDGs and EFAs lack a robust accountability mechanism and are not explicitly linked to international human rights standards. This needs to change, as parallel frameworks should be complementary and mutually reinforcing. However, the Right to Education Initiative has observed a number of potential threats to education rights, such as privatisation, a reductionist approach to learning outcomes, watered down perceptions of equality, austerity measures, lack of accountability on legal guarantees, among others, at these early stages of consultation in the lead up to developing new education goals and targets. This paper explores the implications of some of these threats and how this may impact efforts to improve accountability. 

 
Key resource

This paper is the Right to Education Initiative’s contribution to the on-going discussions to refine the formulation of the post-2015 education goal and targets and to identify related indicators to measure progress towards them. This paper argues that there is a need to introduce a human rights perspective to the post-2015 agenda and furthermore that right to education indicators can give a fuller account of the progress made by States towards achieving the post-2015 goals. Before proposing specific indicators to measure the post-2015 education goal and targets (VI), the paper underlines the importance of linking the post-2015 education agenda to the right to education (II), and demonstrates how the post-2015 education goal and targets are linked to the content of the right to education (III) and extant State obligations (IV). This paper then reflects on the added value and limitations of applying right to education indicators (V).

In 2018, 17.2 million people were internally displaced as a result of natural disasters (IDMC 2019). Just one year later, in 2019, 24.9 million people were displaced due to natural disasters and extreme weather events (IDMC 2020). The catastrophic effects of climate change are no longer isolated emergencies, but have become the new global norm- a reality that is only intensifying each year. Yet the literature regarding climate change has little to no information on the specific nexus between climate displaced and their right to education.

Persons displaced by the effects of climate change face significant vulnerabilities with regard to accessing education: saturated school capacity, destroyed infrastructure, linguistic barriers, difficulties to have past qualifications recognized, discrimination, and more. This is why UNESCO commenced a new initiative: the Impact of Climate Displacement on the Right to Education. This is explored throughout this working paper. 

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