UN Progress on the Right to Free Education: A Clear Path Toward Drafting a New Treaty
In this blogpost, Bede Sheppard reports on a breakthrough UN session in early September at which governments began a process that could strengthen the right to education in international law.
Momentum is mounting toward a new global treaty to strengthen every child’s right to free education. From September 1 to 3, governments gathered at the United Nations in Geneva to consider an optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that would at last align international law with the promise children and their parents have long awaited: education that is free from the earliest years through the end of secondary school.
The turnout underscored the urgency: 92 countries participated. The initiative, led by Sierra Leone, the Dominican Republic, and Luxembourg, is backed by a broad cross-regional coalition. Six new countries—Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Cuba, Jordan, Northern Macedonia, and Zambia— announced support, bringing to 58 the number of states that have publicly backed the initiative.
The debate showed overwhelming support for a new treaty. A strong majority of those speaking favored the protocol, ranging from Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador in Latin America to Ghana, the Gambia, and Zambia in Africa, and Andorra, Bulgaria, and Romania in Europe. A smaller group voiced qualified support, urging attention to national contexts and financing. Only three—Belgium, Eritrea, and the United Kingdom—stated outright opposition. For a process of this magnitude, the degree of consensus is remarkable, and the opposition small.
To the extent that there were divergent views among well-intending and respected experts about what international law already guarantees, the need for clearer international law was only further evidenced.
At the close, the meeting’s chair, Sierra Leone’s ambassador—representing a low-income country that already guarantees 13 years of free education—launched a process of intensive consultations to define key principles for the treaty, laying the groundwork for reconvening for negotiations on a text in 2026.
The need for a protocol is clear. As the chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, Sophie Kiladze, reminded attendees, early childhood education lays the foundation for learning, and secondary schooling determines whether young people can thrive.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees free primary education but stops short of requiring free secondary schooling for all with the same urgency and says nothing about early childhood education or pre-primary education. Regional human rights systems also diverge in the grades and urgency of guarantees of free education. This fragmented approach to free education has helped exclude millions at the very stages that determine life chances.
A new protocol would correct this gap, making explicit that the right to education includes the right to early childhood care and education, and requiring every party to the treaty to provide free public pre-primary and secondary education in addition to primary, ensuring a universal guarantee of free education for all children.
For the first time in UN treaty-making history, children themselves participated. Child delegates from Croatia, Indonesia, Liberia, Mexico, and Scotland—selected by the UN’s human rights office—spoke about how fees and hidden costs shut children out of education, especially the most vulnerable. Their words were both testimony and a demand.
Karen, 16, from Mexico, urged governments to “establish clear and verifiable commitments … such as eliminating all direct or indirect fees” at preschool and secondary levels, and said doing so would mean “closing a historical debt and ensuring that every girl and boy can learn, dream, and fully exercise all their rights.”
Roberto, 17, from Liberia, who spoke via video after being denied a visa, was direct: “I believe public pre-primary and secondary education should be free because it is the foundation of everything… I have seen how the cost of education has pushed many children out of school.”
Prior to the meeting, more than 8,000 children from 40 countries, some as young as 3, responded to a United Nations survey. Across regions, children demanded that governments guarantee free, inclusive education for all children from early childhood to secondary level in law and policy and to make it a reality. They called on governments to eliminate all fees and hidden and indirect costs.
Adults too often opt to delay. But the child delegates emphasized that children cannot wait.
Delegates used the meeting to highlight how free education is already transforming lives in their own countries. Spain and France described the social and developmental benefits of guaranteeing three years of free preschool. Ghana pointed to surging enrollment, especially among low-income children, after abolishing fees for upper secondary education in 2017.
Zambia reported similar benefits from its 2022 decision to make secondary education free. Ecuador emphasized its constitutional guarantee of free public education through the university level. These experiences reveal that free education is not an abstract aspiration but a proven, achievable choice.
Risking the ire of parents back home who know the value of preschool for their young children, the UK acknowledged there may be a gap in international protections for early childhood education, but declared “it is not justified to develop a new treaty solely on free preprimary education.” Strange logic, given that the UK claims its own children already enjoy what it deems “not justified” for others. And a devastating devaluing of the lived experience of 175 million children around the world of preschool age currently not enrolled in such opportunities.
Experts added their voices. A Namibian education academic, Klaus Beiter, and the World President of OMEP (World Organization for Early Childhood Education), Mercedes Mayol Lassalle, emphasized the urgent need for binding standards covering early childhood and secondary education.
Some, including UNICEF, contended that current obligations are sufficient if properly implemented. UNICEF’s position was somewhat baffling in that it seemingly backtracks on its landmark report last year, which recommended “a new, legally binding international framework establishing the right to ECCE [early childhood care and education] … to articulate states’ obligations pertaining to the legal right to ECCE, promoting greater state accountability and monitoring and ensuring minimum resource allocation for ECCE.”
The UN special rapporteur on the right to education was justifiably cautious about the complexities of developing a new treaty, but acknowledged some of the gaps in the legal framework and emphasized that she did not oppose a new instrument. Her predecessor in the role previously recommended that states “work to define and enshrine a right to ECCE, from birth until primary school, in a legally-binding human rights instrument.” (Two further predecessors in the role backed the optional protocol initiative in the consultations prior to this meeting.)
The final day focused on two themes highlighting why delay is untenable: girls’ education and financing. Plan International reminded governments that free education is among the most powerful tools for advancing gender equality.
On financing, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and ActionAid said that austerity and debt undermine education budgets, but showed that sustainable financing is possible through tax reform, debt relief, and international cooperation. “The funding of education should not be seen as a cost,” the UN independent expert said, “It should be seen as an investment.” Human Rights Watch described a meeting with a middle-income country’s education minister who welcomed a new treaty as a tool he could use to encourage his finance counterpart to fund free education.
For many, the topic was evidently personal. Some delegates brought their own children into the negotiating room. In the final country statement of the session, the Dominican Republic’s delegate said: “I say this from my own personal experience… I place great importance on putting a human face on human rights and making tangible what it means to have access to secondary education, which is what gives us the freedom to be here today, discussing this Optional Protocol.”
The UN session was a breakthrough. Governments began a process that could strengthen the right to education in international law. Now they should accelerate. The time has come not for more endless, repetitive debates, but for drafting. Children have been clear: they cannot wait. The promise of free education for all should be written into law, and delivered without delay.
The Author:
Bede Sheppard (@bedeonkidrights.bsky.social) is the deputy child rights director at Human Rights Watch.