A/HRC/15/41
persons, are prioritized by assistance schemes. Also call for specific initiatives
to guarantee that women have access to social security schemes, including
social pensions, without having to depend on a "male breadwinner" through
which household needs are calculated and channelled.53
V.
Right to education
88.
Education is a crucial means by which people can escape poverty and obtain the
means to participate fully in their communities. Education levels strongly and positively
correlate with better employment opportunities. Students coming from families living in
extreme poverty are more likely to drop out of school, or not even attend it in the first
place, in favour of engaging in income-generating activities, including begging, or helping
with household chores. The economic consequences of not finishing primary or secondary
school are enormous and perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Girls are particularly affected:
more commonly denied their right to education, they often end up in domestic work, early
marriage and childbearing and rearing, which in turn increases impoverishment.
89.
W.
A revised version of the draft guiding principles should:
•
Recall the State obligation to immediately ensure free and compulsory
primary education for all, within safe reach and without indirect costs. Such
obligations require implementing policies on both the demand and supply
sides: on the supply side, providing the necessary school infrastructure
(buildings, adequate services and facilities including sanitation, water, and
electricity for low-income settlements); on the demand side, ensuring that
families and communities are not dependent on child labour to live in dignity.
•
Recommend progressively ensuring the availability, accessibility,
acceptability, adaptability and quality of education in all forms and at all
levels. This includes allocating resources in priority towards persons living in
extreme poverty, for example with proactive measures to combat school
dropout and to compensate for socio-economic disadvantage.
•
Recommend taking special measures to ensure the education of girls, children
with disabilities, minorities, refugees, stateless persons, and those living in
remote areas and slums, as being especially vulnerable and marginalized.54
•
Recommend reviewing and reforming legislation to ensure consistency
between the minimum school leaving age and the minimum age of marriage
and employment.55
Right to take part in cultural life
90.
Poverty seriously restricts the ability of a person or a group of persons to exercise
the right to take part in, gain access and contribute to all spheres of cultural life, and
seriously affects their hopes for the future and their ability to effectively enjoy their own
53
54
55
24
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 19 (2007) on the right to
social security.
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 11 (1999) on plans of
action for primary education.
See ILO Convention 138 (1973) concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment, article 2.
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