A/HRC/14/25 III. The legal and normative framework 19. The Special Rapporteur on the right to education associates the fundamental right to education with the non-discriminatory right to free education, which includes direct (fees, transport, textbooks, etc.) and indirect (opportunity) costs (foregone earnings and workrelated learning). 20. The Special Rapporteur also draws attention to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (art. 26), which views the right to education as comprising: (a) fundamental education, which refers to free, often non-formal education for illiterate people, with a strong collective and cultural emphasis for human development (“community education”); and (b) elementary education, i.e., free compulsory formal education which, while not specifying any particular level(s) or stage(s), normatively integrated free post-primary education.15 Article 26 of the Declaration, and subsequent international human rights law,16 also guarantee the right of parents and legal guardians to choose their children’s education in conformity with their religious, moral or philosophical convictions. States, however, are not legally obliged to provide instruction in line with such choices.17 21. The right to education has subsequently been enshrined in a range of international conventions, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) and, more recently, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (1990). Specific to refugee concerns are the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention, 1951) and its 1967 Protocol (arts. 4 and 22), and the Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960, art. 4). 22. The Special Rapporteur also draws attention to a number of regional conventions which also make provision for the right to education, in particular Protocol 1 (1952, art. 2) of the 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms which follows the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in normatively integrating all educational types and levels in the right to education; the 1996 European Social Charter (revised) (art. 17.2); the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (arts. 13 and 16); and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (art. 11). 23. A number of notable declarations and plans of action are also worth mentioning, although these do not carry the same binding obligations on States. The Special Rapporteur wishes to refer to the 1990 World Declaration on Education for All; the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action; the 2000 United Nations Millennium Declaration; and the 2005 World Summit Outcome (paras. 34, 43 and 44).18 24. The Special Rapporteur notes that, over the decades, the formerly more comprehensive notion of the right to education has been reconceptualized. This reconceptualization has a particular geography to it. In the global developing world, this right has come to be normatively restricted to literacy and primary schooling (4–6 years), while in developed countries, it refers to compulsory primary and secondary schooling. 15 16 17 18 GE.10-12879 See John Smyth, ed., World Education Report 2000: The right to education – towards education for all throughout life (Paris, UNESCO, 2000). Katarina Tomasevski, Human rights obligations in education: the 4-A scheme, (Nijmegen, Wolf Legal Publishers, 2006), pp. 29–30. Jacqueline Bhabha, “Children, migration and international norms”, in Migration and International Legal Norms, T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Vincent Chetail, eds., (The Hague, T.M.C. Asser Press, 2002), pp. 203–223. General Assembly resolution 60/1. 7