Realizing the Abidjan Principles: Applying Human Rights Law in Education

• In Event: Situating the Paradoxes of Market-Driven Education Policies Within a Human Right to Education Framework

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation synthesizes the main legal arguments from a human rights perspective on key aspects of market-based education reform covered in this symposium. It focuses on three points: 1) the development process, adoption, and uptake of the Abidjan Principles, as well as the human rights legal perspectives on the issues of 2) school choice and 3) public-private partnerships. The Abidjan Principles, adopted in 2019, compile the relevant human rights treaty law on the right to education into a single Guiding Principles document now serving as a key reference point in both education policy and legal spheres regarding state fulfillment of the obligation to provide free, high-quality public education. In particular, this contribution highlights not only the importance of the legal dimensions of the right to education, but the challenges of translating the legal obligations of states into issues relevant to education research.

Perspective
This presentation uses a human right to education perspective, based in international law and aggregated in the Abidjan Principles, as the basis for analyzing the legal precedence, stipulations, and obligations of different parties – such as states, parents, and private actors – for the issues of parental choice in education and public-private partnerships.
Methods
Document analysis is the primary method, deployed on two levels. First, the original legal authors of background papers for the Abidjan Principles used document analysis to determine the applicable legal frameworks for the issues of parental choice and public private partnerships (Author, 2021). This contribution builds on this work through secondary document analysis of these papers in conjunction with an analysis of the 97 Abidjan Principles to pinpoint the relevant human rights law for these two key issues.
Data sources
The data sources include human right treaties and texts, background papers for the adoption of the Abidjan Principles, and the Abidjan Principles themselves.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
The right to education, as laid out in international treaties, contains both a ‘social-equality’ dimension and a ‘freedom’ dimension. On the one hand, international human rights law requires States to adopt measure that guarantee the right to education of everyone on the basis of the principles of equality and non-discrimination. On the other hand, it requires States to respect the liberty of parents to ensure the religious and moral education of their children according to their own convictions and to choose for their children schools other than public schools, should they so wish. It also recognizes the liberty of private actors - individuals or bodies - to establish and direct educational institutions, subject to the requirement that these schools conform to minimum standards established by the State and with the aims of education under international human rights law.
Scholarly Significance
Given the increased involvement of private actors in education over the past two decades, this work synthesizes findings from a newly adopted text, the Abidjan Principles, that aggregates the human rights law on two of the main points of contestation – parental rights and the role of private actors in public-private partnerships.

Author

• Frank M. Adamson, California State University - Sacramento