Submission to the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child on draft General Comment on the Rights to Education

Human Rights Watch welcomes the opportunity to provide input to the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (the “Committee”) for its General Comment on the right to education (article 11). Human Rights Watch has carried out extensive research on the right to education in over 15 African countries, as well as legal and policy analyses.

This submission proposes areas to strengthen the current draft General Comment in line with existing interpretations of the right to education by other expert treaty bodies, and with evolving aspects of this right.

 

1. Free Education from Pre-Primary through Secondary

(a) A right to early childhood education

Early childhood education can have profound long-term benefits for children’s cognitive and social development, educational attainment, health, and employment prospects. Yet only one in four pre-school-aged children in Sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to attend early childhood education.[1] Children from families living in poverty are the least likely to attend, with cost remaining a significant barrier for many. We therefore congratulate the Committee for including in the draft a reference to “the provision of free early childhood development (pre-primary education)” as an example of the progressive realization of the right to education (draft para. 46).

The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities have expressed the expectation that states provide affordable, accessible, quality early childhood care and education that is inclusive and non-discriminatory, and with adequate financial, technical, and human resources.[2]

In 2015, UN member states unanimously approved the Sustainable Development Goals and signed the Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action. Through Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education, countries committed to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education” including in early childhood. Member states agreed to the target: “[B]y 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education.” All governments unanimously agreed to make at least one year of pre-primary education free for all children.[3]

In 2016, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights urged African countries to “guarantee the full scope of the right to education,” including the “provision of pre-school.”[4]

The draft General Comment refers to the Abidjan Principles on the right to education, an expert interpretation of the right to education, which have also been acknowledged by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, among others.[5] The Abidjan Principles also consider the right to education to require free pre-primary education.[6]

Human Rights Watch therefore recommends that the Committee include in the General Comment a clear statement that “the right to education includes a right to early childhood education” that is free, accessible, of good quality, inclusive, non-discriminatory, and with adequate financial, technical, and human resources. Moreover, we suggest that the General Comment recognize that “all children have a right to at least one year of free pre-primary education.”

(b) Free Primary Education

While a greater number of states party to the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) have made primary education compulsory and available free to all,[7] many schools continue to levy direct or indirect fees in primary education, or expect parental contributions for school furniture, maintenance, and other school-related matters. These “hidden costs” are a significant barrier for many children.[8]

In draft paragraph 34, in addition to “expunging additional financial pressure from families,” Human Rights Watch encourages the Committee to emphasize to states their obligation to guarantee free education, and to explicitly call on states to remove all education-related costs, both direct or indirect.

To increase access for children from disadvantaged households, we encourage the Committee to refer in draft paragraph 64 to free school meals and free or subsidized school transportation, and more broadly, the introduction of universal social security, including child welfare grants.

(c) Free Secondary Education

Many adolescents face systemic, attitudinal, and financial barriers after completing primary education when they want to proceed to secondary education. Many African states charge tuition and other fees, which places a disproportionate burden on low-income families. Even when governments have tuition-free secondary education policies, Human Rights Watch found that students face a wide range of indirect costs, which typically increase as students move from lower to higher secondary education.[9] Tackling indirect or “hidden costs” should include an obligation to remove or significantly reduce costs related to school uniforms, re-enrollment fees, other levies charged at the school level, and school transportation.

The draft General Comment notes that the ACRWC “does not mandate free secondary education” (draft para. 61), but also, apparently inconsistently, that the “obligation to provide free and compulsory secondary education … is not necessarily ‘immediate’” (draft para. 43). Human Rights Watch believes that it would be immensely valuable if the proposed General Comment provided the Committee’s expert interpretation of how to understand the obligation to “progressively make” secondary education “free and accessible to all” today—33 years after the drafting of that commitment.

Since the treaty proposed the progressive introduction of free secondary education starting in 1990, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita across Sub-Saharan Africa has increased from US$726 per capita in 1990 (expressed in current US$) to $1,701 in 2022.[10] As the draft recognizes, secondary education is indispensable for the economic development of a state (draft para. 62), and longitudinal studies now show that investments in secondary education contribute greater returns to economies than those investments cost. All African countries through the Sustainable Development Goals have committed to all children completing free primary and secondary education by 2030—and have therefore acknowledged that at least globally there are financial resources to achieve this goal. Human Rights Watch therefore respectfully urges the Committee to reconsider its statement that “free and compulsory basic education could be, for some States parties, impossible to realise based [on] the strength of their available resources” (draft para. 60).

Moreover, tuition fees at the secondary level are inconsistent with other rights guaranteed by the ACRWC:

Establishing parents’ ability or willingness to pay fees as a threshold barrier for whether a child can access secondary school is hard to reconcile with the ACRWC’s obligation that “[i]n all actions concerning the child undertaken by any person or authority the best interests of the child shall be the primary consideration” (art. 4(1)), as it prioritizes the parent’s economic situation or valuation of education before any consideration of the child’s best interests and rights. Making secondary education dependent upon fees also runs contrary to the recognition of the “evolving capacities” of children to exercise their rights: as children mature and are entitled to more decision-making autonomy about their education, perversely, their agency to exercise this right becomes more constrained by their parents’ willingness or ability to pay the fees.

When secondary education is not free as a right, Human Rights Watch’s research shows that children often work to cover the cost.[11] Children paying to access their right to education frustrates the ACRWC’s protections for children from work that is likely to interfere with the child’s development (art. 15).

Introducing fees at the secondary level creates an immediate barrier, and for some students this will be insurmountable and end their education. Exclusion from secondary education because of fees contradicts states’ obligation under the ACRWC to reduce drop-out rates (art. 11(3)(d)).

Secondary education tuition and fees also discriminate against children from low-income families, despite the ACRWC prohibiting discrimination based on “fortune” (art. 3). In places where parents with limited financial resources face social pressure to prioritize their boys over their girls, secondary-education fees may become another discriminatory barrier in violation of the ACRWC.

Human Rights Watch therefore urges the Committee to use this General Comment to call on states to take immediate measures to ensure that secondary education is accessible to all free of charge and compulsory through the end of lower-secondary school.

In addition, as the draft General Comment refers to the availability of resources (draft paras. 33 and 44), it could draw from commonly used standards, and call upon states to use their “maximum available resources” towards secondary education.[12] We urge the Committee to not refer to resources only as a limitation and a reason for states to fail to realize free secondary education, but also as a potential mechanism to realize the right, and a standard by which their efforts to do so may be measured. Many African countries spend well below the globally accepted standard of 4 to 6 percent of their GDP or 15 to 20 percent of their national budget towards education,[13] and are thus likely to fail to meet the test of committing maximum available resources.

Human Rights Watch urges that the proposed General Comment include states’ obligation to use the “maximum available resources” to realize the right to education. We also encourage the Committee to reference the widely accepted benchmark of spending 4 to 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or 15 to 20 percent of national budgets towards education.

 

2. Discrimination

Governments should be urged to remove any forms of direct discrimination against students. Further, governments should ensure indirect discrimination does not occur as a result of laws, policies, or practices promoted by ministries of education or other government institutions that may have the effect of disproportionately impacting the right to education of children who require further accommodation, or whose circumstances may not be the same as those of the majority school population.[14]

Children with disabilities may be especially affected by the unequal costs of education and indirect forms of discrimination, including due to the absence of reasonable accommodation in schools, which prevents them from completing a full cycle of compulsory education at the stipulated age, and results in them falling behind or dropping out before they proceed on to secondary education. In some cases, schools require families to pay for their accommodations, learning materials, or class assistants, often as a precondition to enrolling children with disabilities.[15]

Similarly, children with albinism often face discrimination in schools including bullying and harassment from teachers, other school staff, and pupils, as well as abduction and trafficking, including by teachers and other school staff.[16]

Human Rights Watch suggests the Committee amend draft paragraph 39 to explicitly state that states must ensure persons with disabilities enjoy the right to free and inclusive education, and that they provide reasonable accommodation of the individual’s requirements, as well as “effective individualized support measures in environments that maximize academic and social development,” in line with obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Africa.

We also recommend the expansion of the list of grounds of discrimination (as recognized in ACRWC art. 3) in the General Comment’s discussion of freedom from discrimination in draft paragraph 18 to recognize and include other common grounds on which children on the continent lack or are denied access to education, including ethnicity, socio-economic status, health status, geographical location, gender identity, and sexual orientation. We further recommend the removal of the word “indiscriminate” in draft paragraph 19.

We recommend the amendment of draft paragraph 20 to include the requirement that states parties ensure the inclusion and protection of children with albinism, including through adoption of education curricula that addresses stigma and misinformation on albinism as well as training of all staff in education institutions to effectively build inclusive schools that are safe for all children.

In draft section III, the Committee could call on States Parties to ratify the UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education, to complement States Parties’ obligations to guarantee the right to education free from discrimination under the ACRWC.

 

3. Lessons Learned from Education Loss as a Result of Covid-19-related School Closures

Covid-19-related school closures pushed tens of millions of African children out of education and deepened existing inequalities in children’s access to education, in the form of digital divides between children with access to technologies and access to the internet and mobile data critical for online learning, and those without. Children who were already most at risk of being excluded from a quality education were most affected, including those who had to work to support their families, and girls who overwhelmingly absorbed the burden of domestic chores.[17]

In countries where free primary and secondary education is not guaranteed for all, but only for children of certain ages, many children aged-out of their entitlements during the pandemic without receiving the full quality education to which they are entitled.[18]

In draft section III, Human Rights Watch suggests adding a recommendation that states remediate the loss of education caused by Covid-19 government-mandated school closures and the lack of accommodations in place at the time, including by ensuring children who aged-out of education without completing compulsory education are supported to complete a full cycle of basic education.

In draft paragraph 72, consider recognizing that digital literacy and access to the internet are increasingly indispensable for children to realize their right to education, and that states should take all possible measures to provide affordable, reliable, and accessible internet service for all students. States should take steps to mitigate disproportionate hardships for poor and marginalized populations, including finding ways to provide discounted and free access to the internet and mobile data, online services, and computers, while at the same time ensuring strong policy protections.

 

4. Protection from Violence against Students, including School-Related Sexual Violence and Attacks against Education

Violence against students, including school-related sexual violence, which includes sexual exploitation, harassment, and abuse, is a reality for many students across many, if not most, African countries.[19] Sexual violence and physical abuse, including corporal punishment, continue to be endemic in many schools and disproportionately impact adolescent girls and children with disabilities.[20] While all adolescent girls and boys are exposed to physical abuse, adolescents with disabilities may be at higher risk of violence in classrooms that is perpetrated by teachers or peers. Children with albinism are at high risk of killings and are routinely subjected to various forms of severe violence, exclusion, and discrimination in schools and in their communities.[21]

A comprehensive study by the African Partnership to End Violence Against Children found that more than half of all children in Africa experience physical abuse, while in some parts of the continent, 4 in 10 girls suffer from sexual violence before the age of 15.[22]

Human Rights Watch encourages the Committee to add to draft paragraphs 22(e), 31, 35, or 41, a prohibition of school-related sexual violence and all forms of violence perpetrated by teachers and school officials in education institutions; and further, to state that the obligation to protect students from all forms of violence, including school-related sexual and gender-based violence, applies to all schools, whether public, private or faith-based.[23]

Attacks on education and military use of schools are a common occurrence in many armed conflicts across African countries.[24] In some cases, widespread attacks on education and military use of schools by both national armed forces and non-state armed groups have jeopardized education systems.[25]

We recommend adding to draft paragraph 38 states’ obligations to protect students, teachers, and schools from targeted attack, and reference the negative consequences of the use of schools for military purposes on students’ and teachers’ safety and the right to education. In addition to Security Council Resolution 1998, we recommend inserting a reference to the Safe Schools Declaration and the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict, which have been widely endorsed by African governments,[26] and Security Council Resolution 2601 (2021) on protecting education during times of armed conflict. We suggest adding a recommendation that states also include explicit protections for schools from military use in relevant legislation, military manuals, doctrine, policies, and trainings.[27] We also suggest changing the reference to “military occupation of schools” in draft paragraph 2 to the broader and more generally used term “use of schools for military purposes.”

 

5. Gender Equality in Education

Girls face numerous systemic and entrenched barriers tied to gender inequality and school-related gender-based violence. In many African countries, they are disproportionately affected by discrimination in access to education. Adolescent girls and women who become pregnant while enrolled in school are often forced to leave and are barred from rejoining once they give birth.[28] A similar fate often applies to adolescent girls who are forced to marry early. Even if they are not barred, there may be little outreach or accommodation to support them to stay in school. In some African countries, school officials routinely subject adolescent girls to pregnancy tests. Human Rights Watch has identified policies that effectively justify and rely on compulsory periodic pregnancy testing to prevent pregnancies.[29] Human Rights Watch has found that pregnancy testing is not a preventive tool: it is stigmatizing for many girls, is often carried out without pupils’ consent, and is a serious infringement of girls’ rights to privacy, dignity, equality, and bodily autonomy.[30]

Poor sanitation, and lack of privacy and separate bathrooms, as well as absent or poor access to clean water stops girls from going to school during their menstrual periods.[31] Menstrual hygiene management is therefore a crucial component of schools and essential to retain girls.[32] Girls should have access to a wide range of adequate, acceptable, and affordable menstrual management materials so that they can choose those that are responsive to their cultural contexts and personal circumstances.[33] They should also have access to adequate facilities, with water and sanitation infrastructure, in schools.[34]

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and this Committee have called on states to encourage pregnant girls to attend or return to school and to respect their obligation to ensure girls who are pregnant or are mothers are “allowed and assisted” to return to school, noting that “it is compulsory … to facilitate the retention and re-entry of pregnant or married girls in schools and to develop alternative education programmes … in circumstances where women are unable or unwilling to return to school following pregnancy or marriage.”[35]

Human Rights Watch has found that most African countries have adopted laws and policies that protect a girl’s right to stay in school during pregnancy and motherhood. Far more countries have frameworks that aim to protect pregnant girls’ and adolescent mothers’ education in a national law or policy than countries that lack policies or have discriminatory measures. As of 2022, Human Rights Watch found that at least 38 African Union countries had measures in place that protect the right to education for pregnant students and adolescent mothers to various degrees.[36] However, a large number of countries still lack a positive policy framework, and some impose a series of strict “re-entry” conditions, including requiring girls to drop out for a fixed period of time and to take a mandatory maternity leave. In some countries, pregnant girls and adolescent mothers may face the threat of criminal penalties, arbitrary school decisions, and social and community level barriers in continuing education. The absence of positive protections exposes students to irregular access to education at the school level, where school officials can decide what happens to a girl’s education, or where discriminatory attitudes and social barriers pressure girls to drop out altogether.[37]

Continuation and re-entry policies are not novel frameworks for African governments. Some countries have had decades-long frameworks that protect the right to education for pregnant students and adolescent mothers to varying degrees. These policies encourage and support the education and academic progress of these students and prevent punishment or explicit exclusion from school because of pregnancy. Yet, even in those countries with a re-entry framework, pregnant girls are often unable to continue their education due to the high cost of education, discriminatory attitudes from school officials, stigma associated with having children outside of wedlock, and a lack of gender-sensitive instruction from teachers.

During times of armed conflict, girls and women face increased gender inequality and gender-based discrimination, in part due to widespread sexual violence by members of national armed forces and non-state armed groups, and higher levels of poverty that exacerbate gender-based violence. Sexual violence survivors rarely return to school because of stigma and humiliation and often lack access to accelerated learning programs or emergency education that responds to their needs.[38] Those who do return often lack support to continue their education. Such contexts reinforce the necessity of strong positive protections and continuation policies for pregnant students and adolescent mothers that are sensitive to the needs of adolescent girls and women affected by conflict or displacement.[39]

Human rights compliant frameworks are necessary first steps to protecting girls’ access to education. Governments should invest in implementation, monitoring, and enforcement of these policies at the school level. To comply with their human rights obligations, governments should ensure that pregnant or parenting students are allowed to remain in school for as long as they choose, are able to continue their education free from complex or burdensome processes for withdrawal and re-entry, and have access to adequate financial and social support, including social protection, to complete their education.

Human Rights Watch recommends the amendment of draft paragraph 20(c) by removing “sanitary pad” and replacing with “adequate, acceptable and affordable menstrual management materials.”

We also recommend the amendment of draft paragraph 22(c) to read: “Prioritizes the prevention of adolescent pregnancies through measures that are consistent with states’ obligations, including respect for the best interests of pupils and their rights to dignity, privacy, equality and bodily autonomy, and their right to access comprehensive sexuality education.”

Human Rights Watch recommends that draft paragraph 35 be amended to:

• Note that it is compulsory to facilitate the retention and continuation of pregnant, parenting, or married girls in schools.
• Encourage states to adopt positive, human rights compliant policies to protect the right to education of students who are pregnant or parenting, providing guidance on support to be provided to them.
• Encourage all actors, including humanitarian actors, to ensure education interventions in humanitarian crises are inclusive of girls who are pregnant or parenting.
• Explicitly call on states to abolish pregnancy testing, or similar discriminatory tests, from current education policy or guidelines, and tackle and eradicate any discriminatory practice that perpetuates gender-based violence and discrimination against girls.
• Encourage states to provide and/or improve menstrual hygiene management and safe sanitation in primary and secondary schools.

In draft paragraph 20(a) and other relevant paragraphs, we recommend adding a reference to the Committee’s Decision No. 002/2022, Legal and Human Rights Centre and Centre for Reproductive Rights (on behalf of Tanzanian girls) v United Republic of Tanzania, which expands on states responsibilities towards pregnant or parenting students.

 

6. Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights

All children and adolescents have a right to information about sexual and reproductive health. The right to information includes a positive responsibility to provide complete and accurate information necessary for the protection and promotion of rights, including the right to health.[40] The Committee on the Rights of the Child has noted that “States should ensure that health systems and services are able to meet the specific sexual and reproductive health needs of adolescents, including family planning and safe abortion services.”[41] Adolescents should have access to “free, confidential adolescent-responsive and non-discriminatory sexual and reproductive health services, information and education, available both off-line and in person, including on family planning, contraception, including emergency contraception, prevention, care and treatment of sexually transmitted infections, counselling, pre-conception care, maternal health services and menstrual hygiene.”[42] The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has clarified that “the right to health care without discrimination requires State parties to remove impediments to the health services reserved for women, including ideology or belief-based barriers.”[43]

States have an obligation to guarantee comprehensive sexuality education.[44] The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, for example, notes the interdependence of the realization of the right to sexual and reproductive health with the right to education and the right to non-discrimination and equality between men and women, which, when combined, entail a “right to education on sexuality and reproduction.”[45]

The Committee on the Rights of the Child has recommended that states adopt:

Age-appropriate, comprehensive and inclusive sexual and reproductive health education, based on scientific evidence and human rights standards and developed with adolescents, should be part of the mandatory school curriculum and reach out-of-school adolescents. Attention should be given to gender equality, sexual diversity, sexual and reproductive health rights, responsible parenthood and sexual behaviour and violence prevention, as well as to preventing early pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.[46]

States parties to the Maputo Protocol should ensure that education institutions, whether government, private or faith-based schools, include sexual and reproductive rights content in their school programs.[47]

Human Rights Watch recommends the amendment of draft paragraph 22(d) to specify that states should ensure students have access to confidential adolescent-responsive and non-discriminatory reproductive and sexual health information and services in schools, which should be responsive to adolescents’ needs and guarantee their privacy and confidentiality. Additionally, such services should be available and accessible to all students and not be limited to “pupils who become pregnant or are on their period” as stated in the draft paragraph.

Human Rights Watch recommends that draft paragraph 59 also:

• Explicitly states that children have the right to complete and accurate information about sexual and reproductive health, and acknowledges that comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is an integral component of the right to education and an explicit obligation on all states parties.
• Calls on states to adopt comprehensive sexuality education as a policy, and integrate it into the national curricula, in line with UNESCO Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education recommendations to introduce CSE in accordance with ages, stages, and children’s level of maturity. To ensure they are adequately implementing CSE, states should ensure content provided in schools and/or content included in national curricula are age-and-stage appropriate, timely, scientifically accurate, non-biased, and evidence-based. States should also respect children’s right to access reliable information on their health, including sexual and reproductive health.

 

7. Children’s Privacy Rights and Education Technology (EdTech)

Governments’ responses to Covid-19-related school closures included a heavy reliance on EdTech products, including online learning products and applications. Human Rights Watch reviewed 164 EdTech products widely used or endorsed by ministries of education during the Covid-19 pandemic, including in 11 African countries,[48] and found that 89 percent appeared to engage in data practices that risked or infringed on children’s rights. These products monitored or had the capacity to monitor children, in most cases secretly and without the consent of children or their parents, in many cases harvesting personal data such as who they are, where they are, what they do in the classroom, who their family and friends are, and what kind of device their families could afford for them to use. Most online learning platforms examined installed tracking technologies that trailed children outside of their virtual classrooms and across the internet over time. Some invisibly tagged and fingerprinted children in ways that were impossible to avoid or erase—even if children, their parents, and teachers had been aware and had the desire to do so—without destroying the device.[49]

Further, most online learning platforms sent or granted access to children’s data to advertising technology (AdTech) companies.[50] In doing so, some EdTech products targeted children with behavioral advertising. By using children’s data—extracted from educational settings—to target them with personalized content and advertisements that follow them across the internet, these companies not only distorted children’s online experiences, but also risked influencing their opinions and beliefs at a time in their lives when they are at high risk of manipulative interference. Many more EdTech products sent children’s data to AdTech companies that specialize in behavioral advertising or whose algorithms determine what children see online.

Human Rights Watch found that few governments checked whether the EdTech they rapidly endorsed or procured for schools were safe for children to use. As a result, children whose families could afford to access the internet, or who made hard sacrifices to do so, were exposed to the privacy practices of the EdTech products they were told or required to use during Covid-19 school closures.[51]

Some governments made it compulsory for students and teachers to use government-built or endorsed EdTech products during the pandemic. This not only subjected them to the data practices and privacy protections—or lack thereof—of those products, but also made it impossible for children to protect themselves by opting for alternative means to access their right to education.

Human Rights Watch strongly recommends that the Committee complements the existing recommendation to “adopt policies and laws that would safeguard children’s interaction with the internet when they are accessing their right to education online” in draft paragraph 72 to urge states to:

• Perform due diligence to ensure that any technology they recommend for online learning protects children’s privacy rights. Governments and schools should include data privacy clauses in any contracts they sign with technology or “Ed Tech” providers, in order to protect the data collected on children during this time from misuse. Over the longer term, governments should institute data protection laws for children.
• Develop and promote digital literacy and children’s data privacy in curricula. Provide training programs for ministry staff, teachers, and other school staff in digital literacy skills and protection of children’s data privacy, to support teachers to conduct online learning for children safely.
• Seek out children’s views in developing policies that protect the best interests of the child in online educational settings, and meaningfully engage children in enhancing the positive benefits that access to the internet and educational technologies can provide for their education, skills, and opportunities.

 

8. Refugee and Asylum-Seeking Children

Refugee, asylum seeking, and other migrant children often face enormous legal, policy and administrative barriers, exclusion, and discrimination when enrolling in school in host countries, including countries with policies or laws that do not explicitly guarantee or make access to education enforceable for these children.[52]

The current draft General Comment does not include a focus on the right to education of forcibly displaced children that clarifies minimum standards applicable under the ACRWC. We encourage the Committee to incorporate references to various treaties, as well as binding and non-binding intergovernmental obligations and recommendations.[53] We particularly recall commitments adopted by states under the Kampala Declaration on Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons in Africa, namely to “ensure access to primary, secondary and post-secondary education, and other training for all children, including refugee and internally displaced children as well as access to informal and adult education by out of school girls and women.”[54]

We also draw the Committee’s attention to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights “Resolution on the inclusion of refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons and stateless persons in socio-economic national systems, services and economic opportunities in Africa,” adopted in August 2023, in particular its recommendations that states facilitate “access to and recognition of refugee documents, raising awareness among immigration, health, education, law enforcement, civil registry and other officials.”[55]

The Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) specifies that “special efforts will be mobilized to minimize the time refugee boys and girls spend out of education, ideally a maximum of three months after arrival [in the host country].”[56] The GCR built on the 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants,[57] in which states outlined their determination to:

Provide quality primary and secondary education in safe learning environments for all refugee children, and to do so within a few months of the initial displacement…. Access to quality education, including for host communities, gives fundamental protection to children and youth in displacement contexts, particularly in situations of conflict and crisis.[58]

The Global Compact on Refugees also outlines a commitment to “meet the specific education needs of refugees… and overcome obstacles to their enrolment and attendance, including through flexible certified learning programmes, especially for girls, as well as persons with disabilities and psychosocial trauma.” States also recognized the importance of facilitating recognition of equivalency of academic, professional and vocational qualifications to ensure that refugee teachers and students are not excluded from education systems due to the lack of proof of qualifications and education level reached.[59] 

Human Rights Watch notes that the “scope of the General Comment” (draft para. 16) includes “migrant and displaced children, children who are refugees,” but suggests this be rewritten for clarity as “children who are refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, or migrants.” We also suggest the addition of a new paragraph under “The nature and extent of States parties’ obligations relating to Article 11 African Children’s Charter” to include a focus on the right to education of displaced children that clarifies minimum standards applicable under the ACRWC, including an obligation on states to ensure access to early childhood, primary, secondary, and post-secondary education, and other training for all children, including refugee, asylum seeking, and internally displaced children; as well as access to informal and adult education by out-of-school girls and women; and commitments to guarantee access to education within three months of arrival in a host country.