DECLARATION OF CHILD RIGHTS-CENTRIC EDUCATION (2024) (DRAFT)

Note:

  • Older draft is available here
  • Draft of 7th October is available in PDF here with a video walk-through here.)
    (If you want to see the rationale for the proposed changes, see this video here)
  • This is the latest Draft as of 10th October (revised based on input from a Founding Member with experience dealing with UN agencies to emphasize Children as the Subjects of their own right in the opening and in the declaration) (PDF here has these changes in gray)
  • To comment on the draft please write to network@rights-centric.education.
  • We hope to finalize the Declaration by 20th October 2024 and start collecting signatures from these groups.

Preamble

WHEREAS the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC) was the first legally binding treaty recognizing Children as the Subjects of their own Rights, obliging member states to respect, protect and fulfill every child’s civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, and

BEARING IN MIND that the United Nations General Assembly, in the “First phase of the World Programme for Human Rights Education”, affirmed that

  • “It is essential to ensure that educational objectives, practices and the organization of the schools are consistent with human rights values and principles”; and

RECALLING that General Comment 1 (2001) of the UN CRC on Article 29 (1) “The Aims of Education” recognized that

  • “'Education' in this context goes far beyond formal schooling to embrace the broad range of life experiences and learning processes which enable children, individually and collectively, to develop their personalities, talents and abilities and to live a full and satisfying life within society"; and 
  • Called for "the fundamental reworking of curricula to include the various aims of education and the systematic revision of textbooks and other teaching materials and technologies, as well as school policies"; in recognition that
  • "Approaches which do no more than seek to superimpose the aims and values of the article on the existing system without encouraging any deeper changes are clearly inadequate"; and
  • “Efforts to promote the enjoyment of other rights must not be undermined, and should be reinforced, by the values imparted in the educational process. This includes not only the content of the curriculum but also the educational processes, the pedagogical methods and the environment within which education takes place, whether it be the home, school, or elsewhere”; and

REASONING that

  1. It is self-evident that mainstreamed practices of Education cannot be Child Rights-Centric, because they evolved and were mainstreamed when Children were still considered Property (of the State or Parents), several decades, or even centuries, prior to the 1989 recognition that Children are the Subjects of their own Rights; and yet
  2. Child Rights are inalienable, indivisible, and interdependent and there cannot be any justification for practices of Education to violate them; and
  3. Whilst the essentiality of ensuring that â€śeducational objectives, practices and the organization of the schools are consistent with human rights values and principles” arise from schools being the institution established explicity for education, to fulfill the state’s obligation to compulsorily provide primary education (UN CRC Article 28), the recognition that education encompasses a â€śbroad range of life experiences and learning processes” which can take place at â€śthe home, school, or elsewhere” makes it imperative that the protection of human rights values and principles be extended to all environments providing education.

WE CALL FOR 

  1. All Duty Bearers with a responsibility to respect, protect and fulfill Children’s Rights to, in, and through Education to absolutely and without reservation recognize Children as the Subjects of their own inalienable and indivisible civil, political, economic, social and cultural Rights; and
  2. All Education Practice (defined broadly as "all experiences and processes which enable children, individually and collectively, to develop their personalities, talents and abilities and to live a full and satisfying life within society") in all Environments (home, school or elsewhere) to be fundamentally reworked to ensure they are consistent with human rights values and principles, and especially the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; and
  3. This reworking to be prioritised in schools and other institutions, both State and non-State, established explicitly for the purpose of Education of the Child; and
  4. Be extended to reworking the evaluation of the education provided for children in non-institutional[1] environments

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[1] International Human Rights law has no explicit acknowledgement of Rights to, in and through Education outside of Schools (e.g. in family- and community-based environments, including nomadic settings). Even where it is permitted under Domestic law, there is no assurance that it will be assessed on Rights-Centric criteria. We call for Human Rights, and especially Child Rights, to be used as the standard for evaluating such education, recognizing that the Rights of Children in such environments should enjoy the same protection as the Rights of Children in schools.