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Thank you for joining New Tactics and other practitioners for an online dialogue on Advancing Children’s Right to Education from February 15 to 21, 2012! We will compile the information shared in this dialogue. This dialogue summary will be available on this webpage in approximately 3 weeks. We will alert all of you that participated in the dialogue that the summary is available.
Education is a basic human right, enshrined in law all over the world. Yet, according to the Right to Education Project, 69 million children are still out of school, more than 700 million can't read. Despite these overwhelming numbers, practitioners have developed innovative and successful ways of ensuring that children in their communities have access to education.
Access to education is critical in ensuring other rights. In an effort to prevent child exploitation in India, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) developed Child Friendly Villages in which all children receive compulsory, good quality education, and the voice and opinion of the children are heard and taken into account. In South Africa, Children’s Budget Unit (CBU) of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) has been using national and provincial government budgets as monitoring mechanisms to advance child-specific socio-economic rights such as the right to education. Recognizing that many families in Brazil cannot afford to send their children to school, the Bolsa Escola program of the Department of Education provides families with a monthly stipend so that children can attend school instead of work in the streets. These are just a few of many tactics that have been used to advance children’s right to education.
This dialogue is an opportunity for practitioners working to advance children’s right to education and those interested in it to discuss questions and challenges, and share experiences and ideas.
Our featured resource practitioners that committed to help lead this dialogue included:
- Paul McAdams - Human Rights Consultant, Canada
- Bailey Grey and Duncan Wilson - Right to Education Project Coordinator, United Kingdom
- Bobbi Kay of the Center for the Advancement and Study of International Education, United States
- Amjad Ali - human rights practitioner in Pakistan
- Bhuwan Ribhu of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), India
- Libby James of Build Africa, United Kingdom
- Vincenza Nazzari, the Director of Education at Equitas, Canada
Photo: Iraq / Peace finally for this little boy in a school rehabilitated by UNHCR in Erbil. / UNHCR / H. Caux / 2011
Discussion threads: Main themes of this dialogue
Participate in this dialogue by adding comments to the discussion threads below. Click on a discussion thread title to add a new comment. Click here for help.
| Discussion Thread | Comments | |
|---|---|---|
| What is the right to education? Why is it important to protect and advance children’s right to education? |
What is the right to education? How is it defined and protected by international law? How is the right to education connected to the rights of the child other human rights? |
13 |
| What are the barriers to children’s access to quality education? |
Why are children not able to access education? Why are children unable to enjoy the right to quality education? What groups of children are particularly vulnerable to facing barriers to education?
|
20 |
| What is being done to advance children’s right to education? |
In what ways are civil society organizations, international organizations, communities and governments advancing children’s right to education? Share your stories!
|
21 |
| What are the next steps? Where are the gaps that still need to be addressed? |
What else needs to be done to advance children’s right to education? Where are the gaps? How can we make advancing children’s right to education more child-centered?
|
12 |
| Share your resources for advancing children’s right to education! |
Share any guides, articles, toolkits, videos and stories that might be helpful to practitioners working to advance children’s right to education. |
8 |
