Realization of the Equal Enjoyment of the Right to Education by Every Girl

A/HRC/RES/47/5View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the Human Rights Council, under agenda item 3Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, published in 2021.

What other versions does this mandate have?

2 versions · 2021–2023

This is an older version — the most recent is A/HRC/RES/54/19

2023A/HRC/RES/54/19Realization of the equal enjoyment of the right to education by every girlLatestCompare with previous version
2021A/HRC/RES/47/5Realization of the equal enjoyment of the right to education by every girl

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

What subjects does this mandate have?

7 topics

Anti-Discrimination Measures Covid-19 Educational Policy Gender Equality Girls Right to Education Women's Rights

What does this mandate say?

26 operative paragraphs

Recognizes that the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a global learning crisis that risks reversing decades of progress and exacerbating the barriers that all girls face in the realization of their equal enjoyment of the right to education, and notes in this regard the statements made by the Secretary-General, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund and other United Nations agencies and bodies indicating that evidence from past epidemics shows that adolescent girls are at particular risk of dropping out of school or not returning to school, even after the crisis is over;

Reaffirms that the right to education, enshrined in international human rights law, can help to enable the realization of many other human rights, particularly for girls;

Recognizes that the realization of the equal enjoyment of the right to education by every girl is crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goals 4 and 5, towards the full, equal and meaningful participation of all girls in society and to leave no one behind;

Calls upon States to place greater emphasis on ensuring at least 12 years of quality education for all girls in the COVID-19 recovery effort, as applicable, including catch-up, non-formal and literacy education for those who have not received formal education, and special, well-financed initiatives for keeping girls in school and ensuring their return to school throughout post-primary education, and to promote access to skills and entrepreneurship training for girls;

Urges all States:

To strengthen and intensify their efforts to take deliberate, concrete and targeted steps for every girl to fully realize the equal enjoyment of the right to education, to eliminate legal, administrative, financial, structural, physical, communication, social and cultural barriers that hinder girls’ equal enjoyment of the right to education, and to appropriately ensure non-discrimination in the admission of girls and boys at all levels of education, particularly when designing policy measures, programmes and resource allocations;

To review, repeal and eliminate, as appropriate, laws, policies and practices that negatively affect the right to education of every girl, in accordance with international human rights obligations, including discriminatory laws, policies, practices, customs, traditions or religious considerations, financial barriers, violence, including sexual violence and harassment on the way to and from school and in the school environment, the worst forms of child labour, early pregnancy, harmful practices such as female genital mutilation, gender stereotypes and child, early and forced marriage;

To eliminate gender stereotypes from all educational processes, practices and teaching materials, including through periodic review and revision of school curricula, textbooks, programmes and teaching methods, and the inclusion of human rights education, including on gender equality and non-discrimination, as part of the mandatory school curriculum, and to ensure that all girls are encouraged to freely choose non-traditional fields of study;

To provide all girls with adequate access to water and safe, separate and quality sanitation facilities in schools and to promote appropriate hygiene behaviour and educational and health practices, in collaboration with civil society and other relevant actors, in order to foster a culture in which menstruation is recognized as healthy and natural and girls are not stigmatized on this basis, addressing the negative social norms around the issue and recognizing that girls’ attendance at school can be affected by negative perceptions of menstruation and by lack of means to maintain safe personal hygiene, such as water, sanitation and hygiene facilities in schools that meet the needs of girls;

Calls upon States:

To promote the progressive realization of girls’ right to education by providing them with access to at least 12 years of quality education by implementing appropriate measures, as applicable, eliminating barriers to enable their return to school in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and promoting continuous education throughout the pandemic;

To strengthen and intensify their efforts to prevent and eliminate all forms of school-related violence against girls, and to hold accountable those responsible for such acts;

To ensure that girls, married and/or pregnant adolescents and young mothers, as well as single mothers, can continue and complete their education, and in this regard design, implement and, where applicable, revise educational policies to allow them to remain in and return to school, providing them with access to sexual and reproductive health-care services, as well as social services and financial and psychosocial support;

Also calls upon States to promote and protect the right of women and girls to equal access to education through enhanced emphasis on free and quality primary and secondary education, including catch-up and literacy education for those who have not received formal education, have left school early or were forced to leave school because of, inter alia, marriage, pregnancy and/or childbirth, on re-entry policies and on vocational training and skills development, which empower young women and girls subjected to child, early and forced marriage to make informed decisions about their lives, employment, economic opportunities and health, including through scientifically accurate, age-appropriate comprehensive education, relevant to cultural contexts, that provides adolescent girls and boys and young women and men, in and out of school, consistent with their evolving capacities, with information on sexual and reproductive health, gender equality and the empowerment of women, human rights, physical, psychological and pubertal development and power in relationships between women and men, to enable them to build self-esteem and informed decision-making, communication and risk reduction skills, and to develop respectful relationships, in full partnership with young persons, parents, legal guardians, caregivers, educators and health-care providers, in order to contribute to ending child, early and forced marriage;

Urges States to promote long-term awareness-raising initiatives in education, in communities, in the media and online, engaging men and boys, through the incorporation of curricula on all women’s and girls’ rights into teacher training courses, on topics including the root causes of gender-based discrimination;

Requests States to ensure equal access to inclusive, equitable and quality education, which may require transformations in education systems, mainstreaming a gender perspective into education programmes, infrastructure development and teacher training, and in this regard calls upon States to invest in quality education, including through adequate financing, to ensure that all girls, including those who are marginalized or in vulnerable situations, enjoy their right to education on the basis of equal opportunity and non-discrimination;

Also requests States, in the COVID-19 recovery effort, to promote gender sensitivity and disability inclusion within education systems in planning, budgeting, implementing, monitoring and reporting, to gather data disaggregated by sex and disability and to share knowledge and experience on educational programmes and policies that support the empowerment of all girls and women;

Encourages States to support girls’ access to skills development and technical and vocational education and training, such as by expanding the scope of education and training opportunities ranging from basic digital fluency to advanced technical skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and in information and communications technology, and to close the digital gender divide, addressing the barriers to girls’ equal and safe access to online spaces, so as not to leave girls further behind, particularly during the mass closure of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic;

Also encourages States to increase investments and international cooperation to provide equal opportunities for all girls to complete free, equitable, inclusive and quality early childhood, primary and secondary education, including by scaling up and strengthening national, regional and international initiatives, as appropriate, such as the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative, the Out-of-School Children Initiative, the Global Partnership for Education and the United Nations Population Fund-United Nations Children’s Fund Global Programme to Accelerate Action to End Child Marriage, and to explore additional innovative mechanisms based on models combining public and private resources, while taking appropriate action to ensure that all education providers are qualified and adequately trained and to give due respect to human rights, including the right to education;

Further encourages States to allocate appropriate financial and technical resources in support of country-led national education plans, and an increase in voluntary contributions to the Global Partnership for Education at the Global Education Summit in July 2021, which has a critical role to play in the global education recovery from COVID-19;

Encourages international cooperation to complement the efforts of States in matters relating to girls’ education, in particular with a view to effectively eliminating all forms of discrimination and stereotypes in education, and supports the efforts of the United Nations system in this regard;

Reaffirms the importance of continuing to develop and enhance standards and methodologies at the national, regional and international levels to improve the collection, analysis and dissemination of gender statistics and data on access to education, in particular access to universal primary education, the gender gap in youth literacy, the number of out-of-school children, and others;

Also reaffirms the importance of enhancing the dialogue among the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UN-Women, the Special Rapporteur on the right to education and other partners who pursue the goals of girls’ education with a view to promoting further the right to education and ensuring that all girls have access to at least 12 years of quality education, as applicable, in the operational activities of the United Nations system;

Encourages the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and relevant special procedure mandate holders to give the required attention to realizing the equal enjoyment of the right to education by every girl in carrying out their mandates and in their reporting, and to work collectively towards its realization through practical and efficient steps;

Requests the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in consultation with States, United Nations agencies, in particular the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, UN-Women, the special procedures of the Human Rights Council, the treaty bodies, civil society organizations and other stakeholders, to prepare a report on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the realization of the equal enjoyment of the right to education by every girl, highlighting the most important challenges and barriers that girls face and making recommendations, for submission to the Human Rights Council at its fiftieth session, and to provide an oral update thereon to the Council at its forty-ninth session;

Decides to remain seized of the matter.

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