A/HRC/44/39
United Nations
General Assembly
Distr.: General
30 June 2020
Original: English
Human Rights Council
Forty-fourth session
15 June–3 July 2020
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights,
including the right to development
Right to education: impact of the coronavirus disease crisis
on the right to education – concerns, challenges and
opportunities
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to education*
Summary
In the present report, which was prepared pursuant to Human Rights Council
resolutions 8/4, 35/2 and 38/9, the Special Rapporteur on the right to education commends
the efforts made by Governments during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis to
preserve human lives while facing scientific uncertainties.
The COVID-19 crisis has had numerous implications for all sectors of human life
and led to both an economic crisis and an education crisis. In the present report, the Special
Rapporteur analyses the issues she considers to be the most pressing from a human rights
perspective. Acting within a human rights framework is indeed crucial to ensuring that
measures adopted in response to the pandemic do not jeopardize the right to education and
do not increase the suffering of the most marginalized.
The Special Rapporteur stresses that while numerous innovative measures have been
adopted in all corners of the globe by many governmental and non-governmental
stakeholders to ensure some continuity of education, they could never have been expected
to compensate for the patent global lack of preparedness for a crisis of this magnitude. Past
failures to build strong and resilient education systems and to fight entrenched inequalities
have had a dramatic impact on the most vulnerable and marginalized, a situation to which
no temporary measure adopted in haste could have fully responded.
The Special Rapporteur makes a number of recommendations. In particular, she
recommends that a thorough assessment be conducted to unpack, in each local context, the
dynamics at play that have led to increased discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to
education during the crisis. Such an assessment should include an analysis of rising
inequalities due to the measures adopted to face the pandemic; an investigation into the
* The present report was submitted late to the conference services without the explanation required
under paragraph 8 of General Assembly resolution 53/208 B.
.
GE.20-08533(E)