[hr-education] Education for all or only for those who can pay?

[***Moderator's note: Please find below a press release about the report
by Katarina Tomasevski, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education,
to the Commission on Human Rights. The report can be found at the Office
of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' website:
http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/FramePage/SReducation+En?OpenDocument
 > Reports > E/CN.4/2004/45  ***]


UNITED NATIONS
Press Release

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EDUCATION FOR ALL OR ONLY FOR THOSE WHO CAN PAY?
UN EXPERT ASKS

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31 March 2004

Schooling is unaffordable to most people in some of the countries that
need it most, says a United Nations human rights expert in denouncing a
"global education deficit".

According to Katarina Tomasevski, Special Rapporteur of the Commission on
Human Rights on the right to education, this deficit is epitomized by the
fact that no Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
country charges for compulsory education, while primary education is free
in only three African countries. Worse, nine years of compulsory education
has become the norm in the OECD, while five or even three years of primary
education is the African average.

"The illogic of expecting education to eliminate poverty while those too
poor to afford the cost are excluded necessitates open recognition and
urgent action", says Ms. Tomasevski, who is presenting her last annual
report to the Commission (document E/CN.4/2004/45) at its ongoing sixtieth
session.

"We have 83 years old international legal norms obliging governments to
make education free and compulsory", says Ms. Tomasevski, "and they were
adopted because we knew then as we know today that education cannot be
made compulsory unless it is free, and that we doom children to labour, or
even criminality, unless we ensure their right to education."

"Denial of children's right to education cannot be retroactively
remedied", the Special Rapporteur continues. "The right to education
operates as multiplier, it unlocks all other human rights when guaranteed
and forecloses them all when denied".

Global education statistics provide varying estimates of the number of
out-of-school children, ranging between 100 and 130 million. Although the
exact number is unknown, says Ms. Tomasevski, the reason is not -it is
the poorest who are excluded. Her report to the Commission summarizes her
findings on the state of primary education in the world. It is not free in
90 countries, almost half of the countries in the world. The largest
number is in Africa (38), followed by Asia (19), Eastern Europe and
Central Asia (14), Latin America and the Caribbean (11), and Middles East
and North Africa (8).

Her two country missions in the past year, to the People's Republic of
China (document E/CN.4/2004/45/Add.1) and Colombia (document
E/CN.4/2004/45/Add.2/Corr.1) have highlighted the financial obstacles for
free primary education. The principal reason is the priority for military
expenditure over investment in education in government budgets, says Ms.
Tomasevski.

Ms. Tomasevski says the barrage of statistics routinely reported about
global strategies to achieve education for all cloak the principal
question: What is education for? Compulsory education bestows upon
governments the power to force all children into school where they can be
indoctrinated or abused unless human rights safeguards are in place. This
is where human rights should make all the difference, she says. Children
are killed at school as corporal punishment remains rampant, even where it
has been formally banned. Or, the parents are being forced to work if they
cannot afford the payments for their children's education, even primary
school children are forced to work at school, some die working.

For most children, the Special Rapporteur says, the knowledge that they
have rights, let alone human rights education, is a distant dream. "If
children know that they have rights", says a parent quoted in her report,
"they become uncontrollable." Indeed, the very idea that children have
rights is new and frightening to many, says Ms. Tomasevski. The almost
universal ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the child cloaks
a great deal of disagreement. She adds: "Teachers, who should be the
principal agents for human rights education, can do nothing where their
own rights are denied. They are still killed, often merely for being
educators".



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