A/HRC/41/37 60. When considering the provision of resources to eligible private institutions, the Abidjan Principles list substantive, procedural and operational requirements that States must strictly observe. 61. Substantive requirements (Guiding Principle 65) indicate in particular that any public-private partnership must be a “time-bound measure that the State can publicly demonstrate to be the only effective option to advance the realisation of the right to education”. It must also meet one of the following four objectives: (a) Ensure short-term access to education where public education is unable to do so; (b) Ensure respect for cultural diversity and the realization of cultural rights, which is particularly relevant, for instance, for minorities and indigenous peoples; (c) Facilitate the integration within the public education system of private institutions (which has been a common model in Europe, for instance in Belgium and the Netherlands); (d) Pilot a pedagogical approach. 62. These four options give States the necessary flexibility to respond pragmatically to particular cases, while keeping to the principles of the realization of the right to education. The requirement that public-private partnerships must be a time-bound measure means that States should periodically reassess all options to advance the realization of the right to education, while fully respecting and promoting cultural diversity. Furthermore, as specified by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its general comment No. 13 (1999) on the right to education, “if a State elects to make a financial contribution to private educational institutions, it must do so without discrimination on any of the prohibited grounds” (para. 54). 63. Procedural requirements (Guiding Principle 66) demand, in particular, that “the State assesses and publicly demonstrates its capacity and intent to continuously monitor and regulate the private instructional educational institution’s ability to meet the applicable standards”. In that respect, however: “One of the ironies of the move to promote publicprivate partnerships is that most of their proponents at least pay lip service to the need for countries entering into them to have a strong domestic institutional capacity to create, manage and evaluate them. Yet this is precisely the capacity that is so often lacking in such contexts” (A/73/396, para. 80). 64. As part of their operational requirements, States should ensure, among other things, “that all private instructional educational institutions receiving public funding make all proprietary data and material that can help to improve the education system, available without a licence within a reasonable time defined by law to the relevant public authorities” (Guiding Principle 72). Too often, States, in particular those among the poorest, contract private partners to support them, but rather than being empowered through that partnership become dependent on a private and generally foreign entity. Such relationships create or entrench unbalanced power relationships and cannot be accepted as a means to realizing the right to education. 65. The Special Rapporteur is concerned that public-private partnerships are currently being developed in education without the necessary safeguards outlined above. She calls in particular on the Governments of Ghana and Sierra Leone, which are reportedly developing public-private partnerships in the field of education, to consider carefully the concerns outlined above, learn from the challenges of education experiments in other countries, such as Liberia, and meet substantive, procedural and operational requirements.51 51 14 See, for example, https://ghanaguardian.com/moe-calls-teacher-unions-a-bluff-set-to-kick-start-gpspolicy-in-september.