30 Articles of the UDHR - Article 26: Right to Education
Article 26: Right to Education
In 2002, when the Kenyan government announced free primary school education for all, Kimani Ng'ang'a Maruge decided to
enroll in Grade One. What’s unusual about that? He was an 84-year-old great-grandfather. A photo on the front page of a
Kenyan newspaper showed him sitting at a tiny desk next to six-year-olds, wearing a uniform he had fashioned for
himself, complete with regulation shorts.
Maruge said he wanted to learn to read the Bible to find out if preachers had been quoting it correctly all his life. He
lived five more years, was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the oldest person to enroll in primary
school, and was taken to New York to address the UN Millennium Development Summit on the importance of free primary
education.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
–Nelson Mandela
Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) makes universal free primary education compulsory, and is
usually thought of as a right about children. But as Maruge showed, people of any age can seek and benefit from
education and literacy. Not only was a movie made about his life, but his story inspired many dropouts in Kenya to
return to school and complete their education.
This right is further enshrined in various international conventions, in particular the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (which has been ratified by every
country except the United States). In Article 26 of the UDHR, we see the right to “full development of the human
personality,” which also appears in Articles 22 and 29. It is clear the drafters saw this term as a way of summarizing
many of the social, economic and cultural rights in the Declaration, and there has been an increasing focus by
international bodies on the role of education in empowering individuals – both children and adults.
Unusually for the UDHR’s long list of rights, this one has in some respects been widely achieved. More children around
the world have access to education today than ever before, with rates of primary school attendance for girls rising to
parity with boys in some regions. The overall number of children out of school worldwide declined from 100 million in
2000 to an estimated 57 million in 2015.
The World Bank and OECD estimate that in 1960, only 42 percent of people in the world could read and write. By 2015 that
figure had risen to 86 percent. Some countries – Andorra, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Georgia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway,
Poland, Russia, Slovenia and Tajikistan – have literacy rates at or near 100 percent.
However, literacy is a moving target. Many countries now aspire – in accordance with the aims laid out in Article 26 –
to make secondary education free and universal, and some aim for more widespread tertiary education. “Literacy” is also
being expanded in many places to include the ability to use numbers, images and computers as well as language, and to
encompass other ways of communicating and gaining useful knowledge.
But these positive figures mask the fact that progress has also been very uneven, due largely to inequalities and
discrimination, with the right to education continuing to be denied to children from marginalized groups and those
living in the worst forms of poverty and deprivation. The most disadvantaged children have continued to be left behind,
for example children with disabilities, indigenous children and stateless children – and especially girls who belong to
these groups.
Despite the steady rise in literacy rates over the past 50 years, there are still 750 million illiterate adults around
the world, most of whom are women. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a key opportunity to ensure that all
youth and most adults achieve literacy and numeracy by 2030, with SDG 4 in particular addressing both access to, and
quality of, education.
In many places, girls are prevented by social and cultural practices from getting an education. In 43 countries, mainly
located in Northern and sub-Saharan Africa and Western and Southern Asia, young women aged 15 to 24 years are still less
likely than young men to have basic reading and writing skills.
“One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.”
– Malala Yousafzai
A lack of education, especially of girls, has been demonstrated to have an enormous impact on society at large, on
health, and on the economic development of countries, not least because deprivation of the right to education often
spans generations, as it perpetuates entrenched cycles of poverty. Education is perhaps the most powerful tool available
to pull marginalized children and adults out of poverty and exclusion, making it possible for them to play an active
role in the processes and decisions that affect them.
Education as a fundamental human right is essential for the exercise of all other human rights. It promotes individual
freedom and contributes definitively to a child’s broader empowerment, wellbeing and development, not least by ensuring
that they are equipped to understand and claim their rights throughout their lives.
Perhaps the most prominent advocate of girls’ education is Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist and the youngest ever
winner of a Nobel Prize. When she persisted in attending school in her native Swat Valley after the local Taliban had
banned girls from school, Malala and two other girls were shot by a Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt.
Undaunted, she continued to pursue her activities after her recovery. “With guns you can kill terrorists, with education
you can kill terrorism,” she says.