Advancing the realization of the right to education in a digital society, using human rights law and mechanisms

• In Event: Roundtable Session 12
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Advocating for quality education for all in a digitalising world: Civil society’s engagement in education policymaking through Education Out Loud

Proposal

Education is a human right. This means that there are right-holders, mainly learners, who have particular entitlements and freedoms. It also means that there are duty bearers, mainly states, who have specific obligations related to the implementation and realization of this right. When using human rights law and mechanisms, both at national and international levels, CSOs can strengthen their monitoring, reporting and advocacy work making the links to these entitlements and obligations leading to better accountability and impacts. 

As society is going through an accelerated digital transformation, education systems are also deeply transforming, integrating new technologies such as artificial intelligence, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), learning machines, scripted learning via teacher tablets, and video-monitoring of classrooms. While these developments can be opportunities to expand quality education, they also raise issues from an ethical and human rights perspective, including regarding violations of students’ privacy, restrictions in access to information and connectivity, inequalities in access to digital education, commercial interests that may conflict with the right to education, health issues due to intensive use of screens and/or lack of social contact, and infringement of quality education with online instruction replacing teachers

This new education dimension has to be integrated in CSOs monitoring and advocacy work. At the same time, the digitalisation of society transforms the way CSOs monitor and advocate for the right to education. The use of digital tools facilitate their work allowing for more advocacy opportunities. The Right to Education Initiative has more than 15-years experience in monitoring the right to education from a human rights perspective, developing tools, conducting research, producing high quality reports for advocacy and accountability, and providing capacity building training to CSO partners. They will present concrete examples of how law and human rights mechanisms have been used to advance the realization of the right to education and how digital tools have been integrated into this work.

Authors

• Juliana Lima, Right to Education Initiative

• Delphine Dorsi, Right to Education Initiative