scholarly journals The Islamic Republic of Iran and children’s right to education: availability & accessibility

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-25
Author(s):  
Shabnam Moinipour

The Islamic Republic of Iran is obliged to respect the right to education under international human rights law and has made legal commitments to conform to the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Drawing on the framework developed by former Special Rapporteur of the UN High Commission for Human Rights on Education, Katarina Tomaševski, that education must be available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable, this article discusses Iran’s response to its obligation to make education available and accessible. It illustrates how the state is falling short in its duty to make education available and accessible to all children under its jurisdiction, reinforcing the gender inequities experienced by girls and practising religious discrimination in educational access.

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-48
Author(s):  
Shabnam Moinipour

Iran, as a United Nations member state, has made moral and legal commitments to conform to international human rights standards, including the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which address the right to education. This article reviews Iran’s commitments to children’s educational rights, drawing on the 4-A scheme developed by the former Special Rapporteur of the UN High Commission for Human Rights on Education, Katarina Tomaševski, whereby education should be available, accessible, acceptable, and adaptable. It examines the State’s obligation to ensure education is acceptable and adaptable. It identifies a number of legal and political reasons why children are unable to claim their educational rights. It calls for substantial educational and societal reform and the prioritisation of the child’s best interests, over those of the State.


Author(s):  
Coomans Fons

This chapter discusses two human rights that belong to the category of economic, social, and cultural rights: the right to education and the right to work. It explains how the modern view of the nature of economic, social, and cultural rights can be applied to these rights. The chapter discusses the sources of the rights under international human rights law, their main features, and components; the obligations resulting from each right; and the relationship of each right with other human rights. Both rights are crucial for the ability to live a life in dignity and develop one’s personality.


Author(s):  
Costello Cathryn ◽  
O’Cinnéide Colm

This chapter analyses the application of the right to work to asylum seekers and refugees, examining the right under international human rights law of global scope, in particular under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. While that instrument is often perceived as being normatively weak, due in part to a misunderstanding about the ‘progressive realization’ standard, the chapter highlights States’ immediate ‘minimum core’ obligations under the right to work. It also assesses the right under African, Inter-American, and European regional human rights mechanisms. Some deprivations of the right to work may entail breaches of regional treaties, directly or indirectly. Restrictions on the right to work may also contribute to violations of absolute rights, such as the prohibitions on inhuman and degrading treatment, or forced labour. The chapter then looks at two possible means of securing the right to work, namely domestic litigation and transnational political processes.


Author(s):  
Julie Ringelheim

This chapter examines the sources of cultural rights in international human rights law, describes their evolution, and highlights the major debates regarding their interpretation. Specifically, it discusses the content and meaning of the right to take part in cultural life, the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, and the rights of authors and inventors to the protection of their moral and material interests.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-39
Author(s):  
Enock Akattu

This paper evaluates the state of education as a human right and demonstrates that it is possible to implement and ultimately protect the right to education within a domestic context. Despite its importance, the right to education has received limited attention from scholars, practitioners and international and regional human rights bodies as compared to other economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs). NGOs have been increasingly interested in using indicators to measure and enforce a state‘s compliance with its obligations under international human rights treaties. Education is one of the few human rights for which it is universally agreed that the individual has a corresponding duty to exercise this right. This paper first of all draws up an inventory of the many international instruments which mention the right to education and analysethem in order to obtain a more precise idea of the content of this right, which often appears blurred. The paper also discusses the right to education as it is guaranteed in articles 13 of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (ICRC) and article 13 of the Protocol of San Salvador. The enjoyment of many civil and political rights, such as freedom of information, expression, assembly and association, the right to vote and to be elected or the right of equal access to public service depends on at least a minimum level of education, including literacy. Similarly, many economic, social and cultural rights, such as the right to choose work, to receive equal pay for equal work, the right to form trade unions, to take part in cultural life, to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and to receive higher education on the basis of capacity, can only be exercised in a meaningful way after a minimum level of education has been achieved. Similarly, this paper discusses education in Kenya as a basic need and a human right (enhancing access, participation, retention, achievement and quality of schooling) to girls and boys and by extension women and men especially with the promulgation of the new Constitution of Kenya 2010 that recognizes education as a Bill of Rights and everyone is bound by the Bill of Rights. This means that all people in Kenya must respect education as a human right. The Bill binds all government institutions and state officers. They are required to respect human rights and deal appropriately with the special needs of individuals and groups in our society. In this paper, the provision of education in the first 4 to 18 years of schooling is considered to be basic, thus a basic right in Kenya


2021 ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Gauthier de Beco

This chapter examines the right to inclusive education. It explains how the CRPD has incorporated the goal of inclusive education into international human rights law and what it expects from States Parties for the realisation of the right to inclusive education. It subsequently explores the Convention’s new emphasis on the right to education while looking at the measures to be adopted in order to achieve inclusive education. It continues by examining the renewed commitment to inclusiveness with regard to education in the field of international human rights law. The chapter upholds that inclusive education is universal and that the right to inclusive education applies to all children alike even if it has disability-specific aspects. It finally investigates what this right actually means for education systems as well as the remaining challenges in its implementation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 486-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shulamit Almog ◽  
Lotem Perry-Hazan

The contention put forward here is that a conceptualization of the right to adaptable education, derived from international human rights law, may be a key factor in interpreting and reviving the notion of multiculturalism in education. We will begin by analyzing two interrelated dimensions of the right to adaptable education: adaptability to the children’s circles of cultural affiliations and adaptability to the children’s preferences. We will continue by describing the need to balance between the right to adaptable education and other features of the right to education - available education, accessible education and acceptable education - as well as with parental rights and social interests. We will conclude by suggesting that the right to adaptable education, as it is defined by international human rights law, can be employed both as a safeguard against denying children educational rights by using the pretext of multiculturalism and as a means for furnishing the notion of multiculturalism with honed, multilayered relevance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 1210-1259
Author(s):  
Branko Rakić

In international human rights law established after World War Two, one of cultural rights that has been traditionally most neglected out of five categories of human rights (civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights), is the right to participation in cultural life, while its segment, by the nature of things, is also the right of access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage. Although international human rights law thus establishes the basis for treating the right of access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage as a human right, international acts dealing with the matters of cultural heritage protection have had a long-prevailing approach in which cultural goods were protected because of their inherent value. It was only recently, with the emerging needs and interests in respect of the safeguarding of cultural diversity and protection of intangible cultural heritage, that the emphasis began to be placed on the relationship, including the legal one, between cultural heritage and human communities, groups and individuals with a special subjective attitude towards it. That is how the human-rights based system of cultural heritage protection was gradually established and the segment of international law dealing with human rights was brought closer to the segment dealing with cultural heritage. In order to consider a right as a human right, apart from the will of law-makers to be like that, it also requires the existence of certain values which constitute the basis for it and which should be safeguarded through the protection of that human right. An understanding deriving from a series of international legal acts and being widespread in theory is that, when it comes to cultural rights, including the right of access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage, such basis is constituted by identity, first of all cultural identity, and human dignity. Therefore, although the foundation is laid for the right of access to and enjoyment of cultural heritage to be treated as a human right, it is necessary to clarify and elaborate, at the legal level, a number of questions which should ensure effective enjoyment of this right. The task is in the hands of states, either as participants in the adoption of international law acts or as national law-makers, so the question remains open as to the nature of their attitude to further development of the human-rights based system of cultural heritage protection.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 304-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Horowitz

AbstractIn three cases, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has held that States must apply their human rights treaty obligations extraterritorially during times of occupation. International human rights law and international humanitarian law (IHL), under which occupation law exists, were not constructed in formal consultation with one another. But their ability to co-exist is logical enough, with human rights law emerging from, and IHL expanding after, World War II with the similar aim of committing governments to protect the most basic notions of humanity. Tensions between the two regimes do, however, exist. Occupation law largely works to restrict Occupying Powers from tampering with the laws and institutions of the occupied territory, whereas significant portions of human rights law press States to amend or change laws and develop infrastructure to accommodate the welfare of the population under their control. With a focus on the positive human rights obligations contained within the right to education, this article looks at the compatibility of these two regimes, points out tensions, and proposes ways for easing their co-existence.


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