Education

At the Millennium Summit in 2000, governments reaffirmed ambitious commitments—to ensure that by 2015, every child around the world is able to attend and complete primary school, and to ensure that by 2005, as many girls as boys would be attending school. More than six years after the summit, school attendance has increased in many parts of the world, but education remains beyond the reach of many millions of the world’s children, particularly girls.  Some 60 million girls and 40 million boys are still out of school, the Global Campaign for Education estimates.

The benefits of education to both children and broader society could not be clearer.  Education breaks generational cycles of poverty by enabling children to gain skills and knowledge for better jobs. Education is strongly linked to concrete improvements in health and nutrition, improving children’s very chances for survival.  Education empowers children to be full and active participants in society, able to exercise their rights and engage in civil and political life.  It is well-documented that increasing girls’ access to education has benefits for development, particularly maternal and children’s health, economic growth, sustainable family size, and democracy.  For example, an additional year of girls’ education can reduce infant mortality by 5-10 percent.   Education is also a powerful protection factor: children who are in school are less likely to come in conflict with the law and much less vulnerable to rampant forms of child exploitation, including child labor, trafficking, and recruitment into armed groups.

Access to free and compulsory primary schooling is already guaranteed by the nearly universally ratified Convention on the Rights of the Child (link).  However, progress in realizing this right is woefully slow.  In more than thirty investigations around the world, Human Rights Watch has repeatedly found significant and systematic barriers to safe and accessible schooling that violate children’s right to education, undermine their ability to learn and cause them to drop out.

For many children around the world, violence is a regular part of the school experience. In some countries, school officials have routinely used corporal punishment to maintain classroom discipline and to punish children for poor academic performance. In other countries, authorities fail to intervene to protect minority children from harassment and attacks by other students. The failure of school officials to protect children from violence in school denies them their right to be free from all forms of physical or mental violence and the full enjoyment of their right to education.

Human Rights Watch works to highlight these abuses by undertaking fact-finding missions around the world and offering concrete recommendations for change.
 
Please see the following reports for more information:

Lessons in Terror: Attacks on Education in Afghanistan
July 2006

Letting Them Fail: Government Neglect and the Right to Education for Children Affected by AIDS
October 2005

Failing Our Children: Barriers to the Right to Education
September 2005

Future Forsaken: Abuses Against Children Affected by HIV/AIDS in India
July 2004

Forgotten Schools: Right to Basic Education for Children on Farms in South Africa
June 2004

Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools
September 2001

Hatred in the Hallways: Violence and Discrimination Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Students in U.S. Schools
May 2001

Scared at School: Sexual Violence Against Girls in South African Schools
March 2001

Spare the Child: Corporal Punishment in Kenyan Schools
September 1999

Promises Broken: Education

World Report 2002 Section on Children's Rights:
Violence Against Children in School

See also our reports on juvenile justice http://www.hrw.org/children/justice.htm, children deprived of parental care http://www.hrw.org/children/abandoned.htm,
and displaced, refugee, and migrant children http://www.hrw.org/children/refugees.htm for information on education in those contexts.