Center for Corporate Auditing, Responsibility and Management policy Authoring/The Duty and Responsibility to Promote and Enforce the Right to Education
1. Members of the global community have collective, as well as individual duties and responsibilities, to take appropriate action to promote, respect and enforce the right to education for all.
2. States have the primary duty and responsibility to take measures to respect, promote and ensure, to the maximum extent possible, the right to education of all within its territory or under its jurisdiction. Such measures should include:
- (a) developing, maintaining or providing for an adequate system of schools and other educational institutions;
- (b) ensuring access to educational institutions at all levels without discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, disability, pr operty, birth or other such similar status, and ensuring equality of opportunity and treatment in education;
- (c) ensuring the right to free and compulsory primary education for all children;
- (d) making secondary and tertiary education available and accessible to the maximum extent possible;
- (e) protecting the academic freedom of teachers;
- (f) respecting the right of individuals and other legal entities to establish and maintain their own private educational institutions;
- (g) promoting vocational and technical training;
- (h) promoting adult education and more particularly adult literacy.
3. Parents have a duty and a responsibility to encourage and facilitate the education of all their children, and have a responsibility in this regard not to discriminate between male and female children. States have a responsibility to ensure this.
4. States have a duty to ensure that all levels of education are directed towards the full development of the human personality without discrimination in particular on the basis of sex or gender; respect for and understanding of human rights and a culture of peace, and enable all persons to participate meaningfully in a democratic society based upon tolerance, understanding and respect for racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity.
5. Academic institutions, teachers and academics have a duty to promote and develop human rights education and awareness, as well as education designed to promote and develop a democratic and peaceful culture based on respect for racial, religious, ethnic and cultural diversity.
6. Competent inter-governmental organisations have a duty to promote and contribute to developing the educational capacity of States, in particular developing countries.
7. Competent inter-governmental organisations have a duty to promote international cooperation in the development and implementation of human rights education, and education designed to instil and develop a democratic and peaceful culture based on respect for racial, religious, ethnic and cultural diversity.
8. Non-governmental organisations have a duty to work with States and inter-governmental organisations in the promotion of the right to education and, in particular human rights education, and shall develop and implement their own human rights education programs.