The right to education of persons with (dis)abilities

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) includes the right to education for all girls and all boys. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), for its part, reaffirms that all people with all types of disabilities must enjoy all human rights.

With respect to education, this international instrument obliges the States which have ratified it to provide the means to guarantee that boys and girls with disabilities are not excluded from free and compulsory primary and secondary education.

It also stipulates they must enable persons with disabilities to learn life and social development skills. In other words, they must guarantee inclusive and equitable education.

Despite this, fewer than half of all boys and girls with disabilities around the world complete their primary education, and 3 out of 10 have never gone to school (according to figures issued by the World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education).

Education is a fundamental element for enabling adapted social inclusion, and teaching systems are powerful tools for generating equal opportunities. Exclusion from the education system, for its part, may mean exclusion from society, hence linking disability to segregation.

Film:At the Philosophers’ School