The United Nations Human Rights Council has taken a significant step to ensure education is accessible to millions of children who are currently unable to attend school due to financial barriers.
Today, the council approved a proposal put forward by Luxembourg, the Dominican Republic, and Sierra Leone, and supported by 29 other countries. This proposal aims to create a working group to draft a new treaty that will explicitly recognize every child’s right to early childhood education, free public preprimary education, and free public secondary education.
Currently, the 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees free and compulsory primary education. However, the new treaty seeks to expand on this, recognizing that free primary education alone is not enough for children to succeed in today’s world.
In 2019, the World Organisation for Early Childhood Education and the Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education presented their findings to the UN Child Rights Committee. They concluded that the current international human rights framework does not specify that the right to education should start in early childhood, before primary school. In 2022, Dr. Koumbou Boly Barry, the UN’s leading education expert, recommended that the right to early childhood education be included in a new legally binding treaty.
Over half a million people worldwide signed an open letter from Malala Yousafzai and Vanessa Nakate, delivered by the activist group Avaaz, calling for a new treaty. Many children’s rights advocates and scholars have supported the idea of adding rights to free preprimary and secondary education through an additional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Child activists from Child Rights Connect have also endorsed this initiative.
In a groundbreaking decision, the Human Rights Council also requested that children be given the chance to express their views on the treaty and participate in its creation. This marks the first time children will have a voice in drafting an international treaty.
The new working group, open to all countries, will hold its first meeting in 2025. The group is urged to act swiftly to adopt the treaty, ensuring that millions of children gain access to their right to free education, from preprimary through secondary school, without further delay.
