Children's education rights: Global perspectives

Education is recognised both as a right itself and an important means for the realisation of other human rights, ‘enhancing all rights and freedoms when it is guaranteed while jeopardizing them all when it is violated’ (Tomaševski, 2003, p. 7). Although it is not a right that is exclusive to children, it is enjoyed mainly by them and is crucial to their development and in many instances their survival and safety. Although similar provisions were laid down in the 1966 International Covenant on Social Economic and Cultural Rights (‘CESCR’), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC; United Nations General Assembly, 1989), in articulating bespoke rights for those under the age of 18, provided a fresh platform that built on agreed global aspirations for education with a specific focus on children. What emerged was a unique and extended articulation of the rights that children have in relation to their education in not one but two lengthy Articles – Articles 28 and 29. These, along with a range of other provisions in the CRC, combine to form a series of interrelated entitlements that cannot be captured adequately by the singular term ‘the right to education’. In this chapter, ‘education rights’ has been chosen in place of the ‘right to education’ in an attempt to be true to the complex and multifaceted ways in which these provisions have evolved and been articulated in international human rights law and in particular in the CRC.