United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms and the Right to Education in Insecurity and Armed Conflict

This publication identifies trends in the practice and contribution of UN human rights mechanisms to the protection of education in times of insecurity and armed conflict and offers recommendations on how such protection might be strengthened. These include a call for greater attention to the impact of disability on access to education in insecurity and armed conflict and advocates that protection should consistently concern all levels of education to ensure the right of adults as well as those of children to high quality education are respected, protected, and fulfilled. The report examines the treatment of 49 states for the period 2007-2012 by UN human rights mechanisms, and considers how they have conceptualized the right to education. It concludes that positive international legal obligations to respect, protect, and provide education continue to apply during insecurity and armed conflict and that targeted attacks against educational staff, students, and facilities, whether by armed forces or armed non-state actors, violate the right to education. Further, while there is no comprehensive international legal prohibition on the now almost routine military use of educational facilities in situations of armed conflict, the trend in law and policy is firmly towards greater restriction on such use. Commissioned by PEIC, researched and authored by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.