Gender and Education for All THE LEAP TO EQUALITY

Chapter - Rights, equality and Education for All

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Rights to education: legal obligations versus political commitments In November 1948 the nations of the world made a declaration about the nature and extent of human rights which was remarkable in its detail. Amongst many others, the right to education was acknowledged for all people. Furthermore, it was declared that elementary education would be free and compulsory and that the higher levels of education would be accessible to all on the basis of merit (United Nations, 1948, Article 26). The task of transforming these undertakings into reality has continued to inspire and inform international action ever since. Such action has taken two main routes. The first of these has used treaties as instruments to secure human rights observance. Between 1976 and 1990 a series of international covenants and conventions was promulgated which provided a comprehensive legal basis for required measures to protect and deliver human rights. Those which most affect education, and gender equality within it, are indicated in Box 1.1 and more detail is provided in Appendix 1. The earliest two of these, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), together with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, have been proclaimed by the United Nations to constitute the International Bill of Human Rights. They contain the provisions on compulsory and free primary education, and non-discrimination in education, that were first set out in the 1948 Declaration. The two more recent conventions – the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1979) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1989) – contain the most comprehensive sets of legally enforceable commitments concerning both rights to education and to gender equality. The first of these, CEDAW, includes wide-ranging provisions for ending gender discrimination. As indicated in Appendix 1, it says that there shall be no distinction in the extent of educational provision for women and men, that there will be equal opportunity for scholarships, for continuing education, literacy, sports and physical education, and that stereotyping in curricula shall be eliminated. Further, it recognizes that special and unequal resource allocation, introduced for the express purpose of ending inequality, is not in itself discriminatory provided that such special measures are ended once equality has been achieved. By mid–2003, 173 countries had ratified this Convention. The exceptions notably included Bahrain, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Somalia, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic and the United States. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely accepted human rights treaty and contains strong guarantees of the right to education. It reaffirms the right of every child, ‘without discrimination of any kind’ to free and compulsory primary schooling, and states that the higher levels shall be ‘accessible to all’. Furthermore, it protects the child from exploitation, including from work that would otherwise interfere with education (Articles 32.1/32.2). The CRC has been ratified by all the nations of the world, with the exception of the United States and Somalia1. The process of ratification is important, as it accords the treaty an internationally recognized legal status which obliges ratifying countries to implement its provisions. Accordingly, the great majority of countries in the world – as a consequence of having ratified – are legally obliged to meet the provisions for gender equality and for universal access to education which are set out in these two treaties. Each of the human rights treaties listed in Box 1.1 entails a reporting procedure, which requires the government’s periodic self-assessment of its compliance. Following ratification, an initial report from the government provides a baseline review of its conformity with the human rights guarantees. It also includes an assessment of the obstacles to implementation and specification of a strategy whereby they can be overcome. This product is issued as an official United Nations document, and is discussed with the relevant United Nations treaty body. Subsequent reports monitor progress or retrogression and, again, identify constraints and means of overcoming them. Governments are expected to publicize these reports, and to involve civil society institutions in both their production and dissemination. These procedures are, in principle, robust. However, if governments do not submit reports, no information is made available to the treaty bodies whereby objective assessments about implementation can be made. In the case of CEDAW, for example, the reporting process obliges each state to submit an initial report within four years of ratifying the Convention, followed by periodic reports at least every four years. However, of the 173 countries that had ratified the convention, initial reports had not been received from 60 of them by mid–2003 (Tomasevski, 2003). Not surprisingly, those governments that are in breach of their reporting obligations are often also in breach of the treaty provisions themselves. The purpose of the reporting process is to secure both domestic and international accountability of governments for implementing measures to guarantee human rights. Nevertheless, implementation of the rights to education and to gender equality within it is patchy, and the process of regulation, via reporting requirements placed on governments, though firm, has proved to be avoidable by about one-third of states. The second route towards securing acceptance of and compliance with human rights obligations has been to use the declarations of international conferences, convened by the United Nations, as additional instruments. The outcomes of four of these – the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (1993), the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) (1994), the World Summit for Social Development (1995), and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) – are also summarized in Box 1.1. Each of them reaffirmed (in different ways and with different emphases) the gender equality provisions in education to which states were already committed by the earlier human rights conventions. The educational commitments made in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have also been reaffirmed on many occasions over the intervening years. Most notably, during the 1960s a set of regional conferences convened by UNESCO established target dates for the achievement of universal primary education (UPE) by 1980 in most of the developing regions of the world. By 1990, however, there was still far to go, and the World Conference on Education for All, held that year in Jomtien (Thailand), set out an ‘expanded vision for education’ and restated the UPE goal for achievement by the year 2000. Although great progress had been made in most regions this, again, was not fully realized by all countries. Accordingly, in 2000, the Dakar Framework for Action and the Millennium Declaration respecified both the education and the gender goals in a more formal way (Box 1.2). All these restatements of the rights to education have indicated their equal applicability for all people, without distinction of race, sex or nationality. However the notion of gender equality was increasingly emphasized over the years, and the achievement of gender parity and equality in education was given separate importance in the most recent statements of the development goals. The Convention on the Rights of the Child contains strong guarantees of the right to education. 1. The United States has taken the view that economic, social and cultural rights are goals that can only be achieved progressively, rather than guaranteed. Consequently, it is not party to human rights treaties dealing with economic and social rights, or gender discrimination.