UN Talks on Free Education Advance as States Weigh Next Steps
In this blogpost, Bede Sheppard reports on a UN session in early September at which governments continued a process that aims to extend and strengthen the right to education in international law.
A United Nations process is moving forward to consider a new legally binding treaty to strengthen children’s right to free education. The proposed Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child would explicitly recognize early childhood care and education as part of the right to education, and guarantee free public pre-primary education, beginning with at least one year, and free public secondary education for all children.
At the first official meeting in 2025, governments built significant momentum and agreed to develop “key principles” for the next stage. The second session, held in Geneva from 31 August to 2 September 2026, moved the process forward, though slightly more slowly than supporters had hoped.
Five child representatives, one selected from each global region, participated directly in the negotiations, drawing on contributions provided by more than 8,100 children and child-led regional consultations. “This is the first time in the history of the United Nations that children have been directly involved in shaping a human rights treaty,” said Roberto, 17, from Liberia.
An endorsement from Guatemala made it the 62nd country to publicly express support for the initiative.
Governments agreed to hold further informal consultations before the next official meeting in October 2027. The meeting’s chair, Ambassador Samuel Saffa from Sierra Leone, maintained his legal assessment that the phase of exploring the idea had been completed, while saying that more consultation should clarify outstanding questions.
How long should children wait?
Numerous delegations, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Bahamas, Bulgaria, Chile, Cuba, Cyprus, Ecuador, Georgia, Peru, South Africa, The Gambia, and Uruguay supported advancing toward an international instrument. The Dominican Republic said that beginning drafting the protocol would not limit the discussion and could allow incorporating different views.
Meanwhile, the European Union called for more time to assess the existing international framework and the added value of a new treaty before drafting a text, a view shared by Algeria, Bangladesh, and Egypt. Some delegations urged more examination of alternatives, or greater efforts to implement existing standards. Yet after two years of discussion, and an exhaustive examination of possible hard- and soft-law pathways, no delegation presented another specific approach offering comparable legal guarantees.
Belgium remains among the states most unconvinced by the initiative. Yet its own Council of State—the country’s supreme administrative court and advisory body on legislation—has repeatedly concluded that existing treaty provisions do not apply to free pre-primary education, and that free secondary education is required to be introduced progressively and is therefore not immediately enforceable. Belgium may reasonably question whether this protocol is the best solution, but its domestic legal analysis confirms the legal gaps the proposal seeks to address.
The concerns raised by states deserve serious engagement. Treaties should be carefully constructed, and legal and implementation questions worked through fully.
Lana, the 15-year-old child representative from Croatia, acknowledged the need to get the protocol right, while stressing that delay also has consequences. “Every day without the protocol is just another day where nothing changes and a child somewhere does not get to exercise their right to education,” she said. “A child who is 5 today will not be 5” when the process finishes. A child waiting for education “cannot simply pause their life.”
Giving meaning to early childhood care and education
One question from delegations was what “early childhood care and education” means.
Sophia Lane from Girls Not Brides pointed to the International Standard Classification of Education as an authoritative reference for age groups and educational levels.
Klara Bahtić, of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education (OMEP), answered from her experience as an early childhood educator. She could not identify the point at which caring stopped and teaching began, she said, because “they happen in the same motion.” She described wiping a child’s nose before returning to a puzzle, turning counting into a clapping game, and calming a frightened child before learning could resume.
Her example captured the challenge. Countries often divide health, nutrition, care, and education among various ministries and budgets. Young children do not experience their development in those compartments. International cooperation, financing, and monitoring all depend on knowing what the right to education encompasses. A narrow understanding could guarantee a year of pre-primary education while leaving children’s earliest learning and development outside the legal framework.
Meanwhile, Borhene Chakroun from UNESCO described education as a continuum beginning in early childhood. UNESCO’s 2024 joint report with UNICEF concluded that international law does not explicitly guarantee the right to early childhood care and education and recommended a new legally binding framework to clarify states’ obligations, strengthen accountability and monitoring, and ensure necessary minimum resource allocation.
From principles to children’s lives
Civil society interventions demonstrated what the legal debate means in practice.
Girls Not Brides highlighted that keeping girls in secondary school is among the most effective measures for reducing child marriage. A guarantee of genuinely free secondary education is an investment in girls’ rights, gender equality, and wider development outcomes.
Education International warned that underinvestment in early childhood has encouraged reliance on private and commercial options that can deepen inequality. And Fe y Alegría urged international cooperation that prioritizes equity and sustainability, strengthens communities, teachers, and public education systems, and helps states fulfil–rather than substitutes for–their responsibility to guarantee the right to education.
The International Disability Alliance stressed that the protocol should preserve existing commitments to inclusive education, and ensure that “free” education covers the additional support and adjustments children with disabilities need to participate equally.
Governments leading the initiative pointed to national experiences:
The Dominican Republic described expanded early childhood provision alongside large-scale programs providing free textbooks, supplies, meals, transport, and cash support.
Bulgaria said sustained public financing of education helped transform the country “from a predominantly rural economy into a high income, high added-value one.”
Sierra Leone, which allocates 22 percent of its recurrent budget to education, described domestic revenue and public-finance reforms supporting free education from pre-primary through secondary education, alongside measures to reduce the costs of learning materials, meals, and transport. Its experience is relevant to affordability concerns: governments should weigh the cost of stronger obligations against the longer-term human rights, social, and economic consequences of exclusion.
Trond, 12, from Sweden, said: “If the United Nations is under financial strain, so are the families in the countries represented here.”
A divided Committee
Sophie Kiladze, chair of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, was candid about disagreement within the committee. Ten of the committee’s 18 members had signed a statement that the existing Convention on the Rights of the Child already adequately addresses free education, and raised concerns that the proposed protocol could weaken existing protections. Other members, however, regarded the absence of explicit guarantees for free pre-primary and secondary education as a gap that needed addressing.
Kiladze, bringing her perspective as a lawyer and former policymaker, made her personal position clear: “I belong to this latter group.”
Professor Klaus Beiter, an international law scholar on the right to education, questioned how far interpretation has, or could, close the gap. The Committee’s General Comment on early childhood recognizes that education begins at birth, but does not frame free pre-primary education as an obligation—much less an urgent minimum core obligation. Beiter said the committee has often called on states to ensure that early childhood or secondary education is affordable, rather than insisting that it should be free.
In recent years, the committee has examined numerous countries not guaranteeing free pre-primary education for all, including high-income countries, without recommending that they do so. In another recent case, the committee called on a high-income country to “progressively yet rapidly” realize free secondary education.
For supporters of the protocol, that record strengthens the case for clearer binding standards.
Forward: Turning consultation into text
The chair’s 10 key principles for the protocol attracted support, with broad agreement around avoiding regression, duplication, and new reporting requirements. Remaining disagreements concern whether “early childhood care and education,” “pre-primary,” and “free” should be defined or retain a margin of discretion reflecting different systems and contexts; if, or how, lifelong learning should be acknowledged; and how a free education protocol should interact with the existing protocol allowing complaints brought by children.
Those questions can be resolved through drafting. “In this room sit the most brilliant legal minds,” Trond told delegates. “Your expertise should be used to build this text, not as an excuse to wait.”
The child representatives urged delegates to ensure the protocol addresses not only direct education costs, such as tuition and registration fees, but also the hidden costs children face, including transportation, uniforms, textbooks, and supplies.
The road to drafting may be a little longer than it appeared a year ago. But it still leads forward. Upcoming consultations should be used to sharpen solutions to remaining questions rather than reopen indefinitely the question of whether governments should act.
On the final day, Trond noted children’s participation in consultations across regions and presentation of concrete proposals. If nothing moved because of what they said, he warned, “then we were only decoration.”
The Author:
Bede Sheppard (@bedeonkidrights.bsky.social) is the deputy child rights director at Human Rights Watch.