A/HRC/43/63 reproductive health education in national curricula and teacher training programmes. Measures must be implemented to ensure universal access to human rights education. Participants also called for multi-stakeholder partnerships in designing human rights education, involving, among others, national human rights institutions and indigenous representatives. It was important to collaborate with youth and ensure their meaningful engagement in implementing the fourth phase of the World Programme for Human Rights Education. Participants described good practices in providing a platform for youth to participate freely and share their views on government initiatives. Participants urged States to submit progress reports on the implementation of the World Programme for Human Rights Education. 38. In response, Mr. Gutiérrez said that human rights education was important for all young people, and especially for those in situations of vulnerability as it enabled their selfawareness as rights holders and as part of the society that had previously excluded them. Human rights education brought diverse young people together. Mr. Gutiérrez called on the United Nations to support local-level youth projects and empower youth to contribute to realizing human rights and peace for all. Mr. Angcos added that human rights education must be conducted using local concepts, narratives and stories that youth could relate to, in order to make human rights more relatable. Ms. Ibiwoye affirmed that young people needed to know their rights in order to claim them. There was an urgent need to invest in education that spread knowledge, values, attitudes and respect for a culture of human rights and lawfulness. Youth should not be seen as mere beneficiaries, but should be empowered as leaders. She argued that more young people should be involved and appointed in high-level positions so that they could influence decisions affecting them. F. How education today can strengthen opportunities for the future 39. A senior human rights adviser at OHCHR, Chris Mburu, shared his experience growing up in a small impoverished Kenyan village, where children had limited opportunities to receive education. School fees provided an additional barrier. His education had been funded by a Swedish woman, Hilde Back, in whose name he had established a foundation to support children’s access to education. In order to ensure equal educational opportunities for all children, governments should guarantee free education. 40. Parmosivea Soobrayan, a regional education advisor to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, questioned what kind of education would lead us to the future we want for all people. He criticized contemporary education systems, which were too focused on individual prosperity and consumption, resulting in marginalization. Education systems were designed to favour children of a particular socioeconomic background with a particular learning style and cognitive ability. Consequently, a small proportion of children achieved the learning levels intended by the curriculum, while millions were left behind. Solutions needed to focus on the social dimensions of development and highlight social norms and social capital. Pedagogical practices should be grounded in inclusive quality education. Teaching should be based on a universal design that was learner-centred and adopted multiple strategies that responded to the diversity of learning needs and styles. Equality and inclusion benefited growth and development and created the necessary conditions to overcome the factors that drove social discord. 41. Elin Martínez, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, spoke about strengthening secondary education for all and underlined that the international community was already behind on its commitments. Most States provided secondary education to high numbers of children, and there had been greater emphasis on formal secondary education at the national and international level, particularly through the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, many children – including children with disabilities, children who dropped out early or whose grades were not high enough, and children who could not afford fees – were effectively barred from formal secondary education, with poor-quality technical and vocational education being the only educational option available. Five key changes could contribute to universal secondary education: free secondary education in law, policy and practice; the removal of filtering exams before or mid-way through secondary school; 11