23/4/2004
Contradictory Laws Undermine Children's Right To Education

The right of children to education is being seriously undermined in dozens of countries by contradictory laws that allow them to work, be married or held criminally responsible at an age when they are legally bound to be in school, a new United Nations report revealed last week.

“In the same country it is not rare to find that children are legally obliged to go to school until they are 14 or 15 years old but that a different law allows them to work at an earlier age or to be married at the age of 12 or to be criminally responsible from the age of seven,” the report’s author, Angela Melchiorre, concludes.

The study was launched in Geneva on the occasion of Education for All Week by the International Bureau of Education of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Right to Education Project, which includes a network of contributors from Brazil to New Zealand headed by UN Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur Katarina Tomasevski.

Only 45 of 158 nations surveyed have equalized the school-leaving age and the minimum age for employment. In 36 countries, children can be employed full-time while they are still obliged to be in full-time education. At the other end of the scale, children in another 21 countries must wait at least a year, and sometimes three after completing compulsory education, before they can legally work.

At the same time, there remain substantial differences in children attending primary and secondary schools worldwide between countries and regions ranging from as much as
over 17 years of education to as little as two years. The UNESCO Global Education Digest 2004 shows that children in Europe, South America and Oceania spend the most time in school with an average of 12 years while in Africa the average is 7.6 years. But Africa has also shown the greatest improvement over the decade.

At the top end, a child in Finland, New Zealand or Norway can expect to receive over 17 years of education, almost twice as much as in Bangladesh or Myanmar and four times as much in Niger or Burkina Faso. North American children spend an average of just over 11 years and children in Asia nine years. The lowest average in the world was registered in Afghanistan for the2001/02 school year - just over two years.

The UN Children's fund, UNESCO, is particularly concerned with the disproportionate number of girls denied schooling. “As long as millions of girls are denied a basic education, we stand little chance of improving the lives of the world’s poorest people,” UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said. “Education is not only the key to a young girl's personal fulfilment, but it is essential for reducing poverty, stopping HIV/AIDS, and achieving all other development goals.”