Advocacy and enforceability for the right to education in emergencies
Advocacy
Advocacy to promote and protect the right to education in emergencies is something one can engage in as an organisation or individual. The following are examples*. However, it is important that each potential action be evaluated against the particular situation, as not all actions would be appropriate or safe in all situations.
- Link up with other organisations/networks working on education
- Work directly with communities to inform people of their rights, facilitating human rights education
- Work with communities to develop an advocacy campaign
- Write news articles for local publications or the attention of national and international media
- Create a petition on a specific issue and collect signatures
- Meet with government officials, UN agencies and other international, regional and national decision makers
- Write letters to decision makers
- Challenge and test the justice system
- Assist and support human rights lawyers and organisations, to monitor and to document human rights violations
- Empower people to make rights-based budget reviews
- Act on government reports submitted to international treaty-monitoring bodies (e.g., CRC, CECSR, CEDAW, etc)
- Work with local communities to write ‘shadow’ reports when their country is submitting reports to international treaty monitoring bodies.
- Encourage UN Special Rapporteurs/Special Representatives to visit and report
(*Inspired by the Women’s Commissions Right to Education During Displacement, 2006)
Enforceability
The legal framework sets a high common standard and is at the heart of a human rights-based approach to good planning and implementation of the right to education. If such approach is used and the standard is met, then law has served its purpose and there is no need to utilise some of the more judicial enforcement mechanisms which it makes available. However, it is important for development and humanitarian actors to know that there are actions available for civil society or the international community to hold duty-bearers to account, if these do not deliver. Such actions should always be last resort, as they are often complicated, take time, money and attention.
Legal enforceability involves the possibility of courts and quasi-judicial bodies to consider claims on alleged violation of the rights and, when appropriate, to provide remedies. Human rights set standards for how access to justice must look, as well as inspire to question the protection offered by laws or how domestic laws may contradict international standards.
The State’s obligation to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of anyone residing on its territory includes the key provision of basic access to justice. However, in times of emergency, such access may be denied or suspended, or the justice rendered may even be the cause of conflict. Nor may it be possible for the state to provide access to justice for logistical reasons, yet efforts to gather evidence, protect witnesses, and make economic resources available must be a priority for re-establishing the rule of law. It is therefore the responsibility of any duty-bearer, be it the State or other actors fulfilling the role of protection, to document and keep evidence of violations for use at the first available instance, upon return to relative stability and the rule of law, or for the attention of international courts. Civil society, human rights lawyers and communities themselves must also document violations at all times, to act as a strong voice in claiming rights.
If national remedies are either exhausted or found to be lacking, one claimants or human rights lawyers can take a violation to the regional or international level. In times of emergency, however, this may not be possible either, and may not even be seen as a top priority in the early phases of intervention and recovery.
The International Criminal Court deals specifically with crimes committed during war and emergencies, and will be relevant with regards to the attack on schools, teachers or learners, systematic abuse of students, or the use of schools as recruitment grounds for child soldiers. In this fight against the impunity of perpetrators the law should be used in full force and not just be a last resort: attacks are criminal offenses, war crimes, or crimes against humanity and must be treated as such!
For more on using the law, see these pages
