The right to education is recognized, promoted and protected at all levels from national, regional to international. Education is the primary vehicle by which economically and socially marginalized adults and children can lift themselves out of poverty and obtain the means to participate fully in their communities. Education has a vital role in empowering women, safeguarding children from exploitative and hazardous labour and sexualxploitation, promoting human rights and democracy, protecting the environment, and controlling population growth. The right to education is a fundamental human right. It is also central to realizing other human rights. Education is an extraordinary tool of empowerment. It is essential for the promotion and protection of all human rights. However, too often at both the national and international levels not enough is done to ensure the effective implementation of the right to education. Achieving the right to basic education, as a fundamental human right, is one of the biggest development challenges faced by the international community today. Millions of children, youth and adults remain deprived of basic education. Several international conventions, numerous writings and reports by United Nations (UN) bodies stress the importance of the fundamental right to education. The right to education is codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The international community reaffirmed the right to education at the World Education Forum in 2000. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has, therefore, placed the right to education at the forefront of its activities and the Education for All (EFA) is high on its agenda. The Dakar Forum agreed on six goals, which were considered to be essential, attainable and affordable, given strong international commitment and resolve. The right to education is an integral part of UNESCO’s constitutional mandate. The constitution of UNESCO expresses the belief of its founders in “full and equal educational opportunities for all”. The Dakar Framework for Action committed governments to strengthening national and regional mechanisms to ensure that EFA was on the agenda, inter alia, of every national legislature. It also emphasized that at the national level concrete measures are to be taken so that legal foundations of the right to education are strengthened in national systems. To make poverty history the international community realized that there is a need to provide financial support to develop poverty stricken states for complete removal of poverty. A target has been fixed to achieve this goal by the UN General Assembly and the UN Millennium Declaration was adopted in September 2000 in which states agreed to endeavour their best to eradicate poverty, promote human dignity and equality and, thereby, achieve peace, democracy and environmental sustainability. In particular, the international community committed, in the Millennium Development Goals, to cut extreme poverty by half by 2015 and to banish extreme poverty by 2025. The international community has set a target that by 2015 children everywhere, both boys and girls, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
