Envisioning Guiding Principles on the Right to Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) as a way to advance its implementation in a transforming world.

Group Submission Type: Paper Session

Description of Session

The right to education starts at birth. Every young child, from birth to 8 years of age, has the right to early childhood care and education (ECCE) . Exercising the right to education along with care at an early age is crucial as it is closely linked to young children’s right to maximum development. Despite its importance, there exist huge inequalities in access and quality within and across countries. The changing scenario of climate calamities, health emergencies, loss of biodiversity, digital divide, increasing privatisation trends, structural poverty, war and violence, displacement and forced migration, further exacerbate these inequalities.

Recognising these challenges, States have made political commitments on various occasions, including the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 and the Tashkent Declaration in November 2022, at the UNESCO World Conference on ECCE. Yet, ECCE is not a priority and lacks legal protection. In many countries, these political commitments that set goals for ECCE are not translated into legal obligations to make states accountable. At the international level, although some aspects of ECCE rights are explicitly recognised in a few international human rights treaties, some dimensions are only reflected implicitly, thus making States' obligations less visible. Moreover, as observed by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Education 2022 report on ECCE, it is 'captured piecemeal in multiple instruments.'

Therefore, the need to further develop and strengthen the international human rights framework to recognise more clearly and explicitly the ECCE rights and address the evolving changes has emerged on various occasions. The past two years have been marked by substantial progress in ECCE and reflection on the implications of normative framework and related rights implementation. In particular, UNESCO's Global Partnership Strategy for Early Childhood (GPS), the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education (UNSR) on Early Childhood Care and Education, and the Tashkent Declaration emphasise this.

In this context, various stakeholders, including UNESCO, the office of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, ECCE practitioners, civil society organisations, and academics who are engaged in ECCE work from a human rights perspective, and have undertaken research on this topic came together to collectively reflect and constructively work towards strengthening national and
International normative frameworks and formed a 'Global Advocacy Group on ECCE Rights' - an informal group that engaged in various deliberations and outputs toward strengthening the legal framework on ECCE rights.

These deliberations began with the organisation of a panel at the 2021 CIES Conference on ‘Early childhood education from human rights perspective: Overview and challenges as regards the international legal framework, national implementation and monitoring.’ Since then a series of discussions held at various platforms, including at the parallel session (and publication of a thematic report entitled 'Building and strengthening the legal framework on ECCE rights: achievements, challenges and actions for change') at the Second World Conference on ECCE (WCECCE) in November 2022 in Uzbekistan and organisation of an online Expert Workshop on 'Clarifying the legal framework of ECCE rights: Key components and obligations' in July 2023.

As a result of the various research, key events, series of discussions, consultations and recommendations that emerged over the years concerning the normative framework, the drafting process of ‘The Guiding Principles regarding the Right to ECCE’ (hereafter ‘The guiding principles) began. The guiding principles aim to clarify the normative content of the right to education concerning ECCE rights by 'unpacking and compiling' the existing legal obligations of States to guarantee ECCE rights as prescribed under international human rights law.

Rolla Moumné, Right to Education Programme Lead and Specialist, at UNESCO, will focus on the relevance and background to the development of guiding principles, with specific reference to UNESCO’s Evolving Right to Education initiative. She will explain the broader scope of this Initiative which aims to ensure lifelong learning opportunities for every individual and support the transformation of education by investigating how the right to education could be further reinforced to meet evolving realities, better address contemporary challenges and anticipate future needs. In particular, she will position how the guiding principles will inform the evolving right-to-education initiative, which is important as a first step towards strengthening the normative framework

Delphine Dorsi, Director, of the Right to Education Initiative will provide an overview of existing international human rights mechanisms that cover the right to ECCE. She will further highlight the various research conducted by UNESCO, civil society organisations, and academia and highlight the key challenges and opportunities in the existing legal framework at the national laws and in the international human rights framework.

Gina Pancorbo, Coordinator of Research, Policy and Advocacy at Education International, will provide an overview of the content and drafting process of guiding principles. She will provide a comparative analysis by drawing up the lessons from the experience of implementing and disseminating the ILO policy guidelines on the promotion of decent work for early childhood education personnel.

This Side event aims to reach out to ECCE educators, researchers, experts and practitioners at the CIES conference for further engagement on the development of guiding principles, especially to deep dive into its relevance in today’s changing scenario. Further, it intends to deepen the discourse on strengthening the normative framework of ECCE through a multi-stakeholder discussion.

Sub Unit

• Early Childhood Development SIG

Chair

• Mathias Urban, Dublin City University

Discussant

• Delphine Dorsi, Right to Education Initiative