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Realizing the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education

Realizing the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education

15 June 2021 Book Launch | Realizing the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education: Human Rights, Public Education, and the Role of Private Actors in Education

 

On 15 June 2021, GI-ESCR, NORRAG, the Right to Education Initiative (RTE) and California State University (CSU) co-organised the online book launch of Realizing the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education: Human Rights, Public Education, and the Role of Private Actors in Education. Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona and Sylvain Aubry, respectively GI-ESCR’s Executive Director and Director of Law and Policy, contributed as author and editor of this key publication on the right to education.

The online event welcomed over 110 attendees. The editors and authors of the book participated in an interactive panel discussion, which provided a unique overview of the book’s significant conclusions.

Summary of the event

Part 1 | Presentations

After an introduction by Moira V. Faul, Executive Director at NORRAG, Sylvain Aubry, one of the editors of the book and Director of Law and Policy at the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR), started the event off by providing some background on the Abidjan Principles and the questions addressed in the book. He elaborated upon the process that went into developing the key concepts of Abidjan Principles, which consisted of in-depth and rigorous legal and conceptual research as well as engagement with people and communities around the world. This research is the focus of the book, along with insights into some of the most important aspects of the Abidjan Principles and questions regarding their implementation. He concluded by explaining that, since the Abidjan Principles were adopted in 2019 they have been largely recognized by all major Human Rights groups in the UN and have already had some impact in practice.

Next, Frank Adamson of California State University in Sacramento (CSU), the lead book editor, provided an outline framing the debates that were presented by the book. Chapters are organized into two sections: laws and education, and they are split into four topical groups. The first section provides background on the Abidjan Principles as the legal basis for public education. The second deals with the issue of school choice from a legal perspective, highlighting the relationship between parental rights and state obligations. The third tackles Public-Private Partnerships, and the fourth grouping of chapters focuses on the role of private actors in education in two key understudied geographies: East Africa and Francophone countries.

Following Frank Adamson’s outline, the authors presented key points from their chapters:

  • Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona, Executive Director at GI-ESCR, began by giving a brief overview of the second chapter which focuses on the use of guiding principles in human rights law.

  • Jacqueline Mowbray, Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Law School and External Legal Advisor to the Commonwealth of Australia’s Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, presented chapter three in which she argues that in order to fulfil the right to public education, states must provide free quality public education to all within their jurisdiction.

  • Roman Zinigrad, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Critical Democracy Studies at the American University of Paris, provided insights into chapter four, which examines the role of parental rights in education as it is established and interpreted in the International Human Rights Law.

  • Joanna Härmä, a writer and researcher who has conducted extensive research on private schools targeting low-income areas of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, explored what “school choice” really means (chapter six) from the perspective of the family in different country contexts.

  • Sandra Fredman, Professor of the Laws of the British Commonwealth and the USA at the University of Oxford and Fellow of the British Academy, questions in chapter five whether states, who bear the duty to provide free and compulsory education for all, can discharge this responsibility by funding private actors to do so.

  • Chapter seven is a collaboration between Antoni Verger, Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Mauro Moschetti, full-time Associate Researcher at the Department of Pedagogy at the University of Girona, and Clara Fontdevila, Research Associate at the University of Glasgow. Fontdevila presented the results of a meta-analysis on the impacts of different forms of Public-Private Partnerships for student achievement and equity.

  • Marie-France Lange, Researcher at the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) and member of the CEPED University of Paris/IRD research team, explained in chapter nine the ways in which education privatization occurs in 18 Francophone countries.

  • Linda Oduor-Noah, the Program Manager at the Education Partnerships Group, gave an overview of chapter eight which charts the growth of private actors in education and presents the evolution of private provisions in East Africa.

Part 2 | Questions & Answers

Following the authors’ presentations, a Q&A session allowed for the authors and editors to delve into a more in-depth discussion regarding questions raised in the book and the impacts of the Abidjan Principles on the right to education, school choice, Public-Private Partnerships, and private actors. Some of the questions raised by the audience included:

  • What legal obligations elaborated in the Abidjan Principles are placed on International Organizations vis-à-vis governmental work with private providers and the financial flow of either public or international public money?

  • There have been criticisms from the NGO sector that the Abidjan Principles portray commercial actors as the main problem. There is a sentiment that the Abidjan Principles are treating all kinds of private schools in the same way, so must we have more distinctions between, for example, commercial private schools and other private schools such as community-run or NGO-managed schools? Do private schools still need to exist as a systemic necessity in order to retain a certain freedom in the education system?

  • What can be done to help certain governments realize that private education providers are actually supporting the government in ensuring that there are no more out of school children, rather than the money-making ventures that they are sometimes perceived to be?

  • How can the Abidjan Principles help in rethinking the model of Human Rights universal access to education in order to overcome the gap between the model as it has developed over time and available resources?

  • How can the role of the state be reframed in order to ensure greater participation of citizens and communities to create a more relational conception of their entitlement and pursuit of their human right to education?

  • In what ways should the state support low-fee private schools, knowing that there are children who rely on education from those schools, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Finally, the other two editors of the book, Mireille de Koning (OSF) and Delphine Dorsi (RTE), concluded the panel with closing remarks.

 

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The book

Realizing the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education: Human Rights, Public Education, and the Role of Private Actors in Education compiles 8 papers that informed the development of the Abidjan Principles. It mixes cutting-edge legal and social research papers, providing a multidisciplinary analysis on some of the most critical issues in contemporary education discussions, from public-private partnerships to the right to public education. The book also provides an insight into the richness of the reflections that led to the adoption of the Abidjan Principles by 57 experts in February 2019, a text that quickly became the reference legal text on the right to education.

The book is available for free online, in open access, here: https://bit.ly/BookAPs

Realizing the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education: Human Rights, Public Education, and the Role of Private Actors in Education is the third volume in the NORRAG Book Series on International Education and Development, published by  E. Elgar Cheltenham (UK).

Watch the authors present their chapters!

Ahead of the event, the book’s authors pitched the essence of the chapter in 2-minute videos

Watch the videos here on our Youtube special playlist! and some samples here below!

 

What are the Abidjan Principles?

Watch the animation and a full playlist of short videos to know all about the Abidjan Principles!

 

 

More on the book

‘Realizing the Abidjan Principles on the Right to Education: Human Rights, Public Education, and the Role of Private Actors in Education was published in May 2021 and presented during a CIES 2021 panel session chaired by Professor Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Director of NORRAG. The volume is edited by Frank Adamson, Assistant Professor of Education Leadership at California State University; Sylvain Aubry, Research and Legal Advisor at The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Mireille de Koning, Program Officer in the Open Society Education Support Program at Open Society Foundations and Delphine Dorsi, Director of the Right to Education Initiative (RTE).

This is the third volume of the open-access book series entitled NORRAG Series in International Education and Development, published by E. Elgar Cheltenham, UK. The books in the series intend to generate an international debate on emerging trends in education and provide space for authors that represent diverse perspectives and knowledge communities.

This insightful book analyses the process of the first adoption of guiding human rights principles for education, the Abidjan Principles. It explains the development of the Abidjan Principles, including their articulation of the right to education, the state obligation to provide quality public education, and the role of private actors in education.

Multidisciplinary in approach, both legal and education scholars address key issues on the right to education, including parental rights in education, the impact of school choice, and evidence about inequities arising from private involvement in education at the global level.

Focusing on East African and Francophone countries, as well as the global level, chapters explore the role and impact of private actors and privatization in education. The book concludes by calling for the rights outlined in the Abidjan Principles not to remain locked in text, but for states to take responsibility and be held to account for delivering them, as promised in international human rights treaties.

Interpreting human rights law as requiring that states provide a quality public education, this book will be a valuable resource for academics and students of education policy, human rights, and education law. It will also be beneficial for policy makers, practitioners, and advocacy groups working on the right to education.

Read this open access book at the Edward Elgar website

Contents of the book:

  1. Chapter 1: Developing Human Rights Guiding Principles on State Obligations Regarding Private Education (Sylvain Aubry, Mireille de Koning, & Frank Adamson)

Part I: The Contours of the Human Right to Education

  1. Chapter 2: Human Rights Guiding Principles: A Forward-Looking Retrospective (Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona)

  2. Chapter 3: Is there a Right to Public Education? (Jacqueline Mowbray)

  3. Chapter 4: Parental Rights in Education under International Law: Nature and Scope (Roman Zinigrad)

  4. Chapter 5: State funding of Private Education: The Role of Human Rights (Sandra Fredman)

Part II: What Education Research Reveals

  1. Chapter 6: Evidence on School Choice and the Human Right to Education (Joanna Härmä)

  2. Chapter 7: How and Why Policy Design Matters: Understanding the Diverging Effects of Public-Private Partnerships in Education (Antoni Verger, Mauro C. Moschetti, and Clara Fontdevila)

  3. Chapter 8: The Growth of Private Actors in Education in East Africa (Linda Oduor-Noah)

  4. Chapter 9: The Evolution and Forms of Education Privatization within Francophone Countries (Marie-France Lange)

  5. Chapter 10: Synthesizing the Research to Strengthen the Implementation of the Abidjan Principles (Frank Adamson, Delphine Dorsi, and Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona)

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Climate and Environmental Justice

We have advanced rights-based and gender-transformative transition frameworks through research that centres the lived experiences of women and marginalised communities on the frontlines of extractive energy policies, promoting climate and energy frameworks attentive to the social and care-related impacts of transition pathways. We have developed a clear vision for a gender-just transition, firmly rooted in gender and human rights norms, establishing both the legal basis and the direction for the transformative changes our planet and societies urgently need. In particular, the ‘Guiding Principles for Gender Equality and Human Rights in the Energy Transition’, a collective effort built through online consultations, an in-person workshop and multiple rounds of revision with activists, practitioners and experts from around the world, outline a transformative vision for reshaping global energy systems through a human rights and gender equality lens.

Our work recognises that the climate emergency is both an existential threat and an opportunity to reimagine societies built on social, gender, economic and environmental justice. We ground our advocacy in feminist and intersectional principles, prioritising the agency and perspectives of communities in the Global South who have contributed the least to the climate emergency yet face its most devastating consequences. Central to our approach is the understanding that energy is not merely a commodity but a fundamental human right; essential for dignity, health, education, work and the realisation of countless other rights. We challenge approaches to the energy transition that risk replicating the harmful patterns of fossil fuel extraction and, instead, advocate for transformative policies that ensure human rights and gender equality as central to building climate-resilient societies rooted in dignity, justice and planetary well-being.

What's next?

We will continue to challenge approaches that treat energy transition as merely a technical shift, instead positioning it as an opportunity to reimagine economies and societies rooted in dignity for all, with particular attention to communities in the Global South who have contributed least to the climate emergency yet are most exposed to its worst effects.

We will connect community-level evidence and the lived experiences of those on the frontlines of extractive policies to national reform and global norm-setting, breaking down silos between human rights, gender, and climate movements, and advancing a shared vision that recognises just transitions as not only fundamental to achieving climate-resilient and sustainable societies, but as transformative pathways that advance social and gender equality, redistribute power and resources equitably, and ensure that energy systems serve the public good rather than profit.

We will mainstream rights-based and genderjust transition priorities in key multilateral spaces (particularly, within the Just Transition Work Programme and the to-be-developed Just Transition Mechanism, within the UNFCCC) to guarantee that just transitions are advanced at all levels.

We will also translate our work, through strategic advocacy, into at least two concrete policy wins, whether promoted, adopted, implemented, or scaled, in priority countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa, or Kenya), ensuring these policies align with human rights standards, centre gender equality, and reflect the needs and views of affected communities.

We will build momentum for the progressive recognition of the right to sustainable energy to shift dominant narratives away from purely extractive solutions that sideline gendered impacts, community participation, and Global South perspectives.

Economic Justice and Climate Finance

Our work has transformed the global discussion on fiscal policy in a more just, emancipatory and sustainable direction. Our approach has combined both high-level, expert contributions within decisionmaking circles, with bold, impactful work on narrative change with the general public.

We have been instrumental in the inclusion of human rights as a guiding principle of the future United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, a multilateral instrument with the potential of raising approx. USD 492 billion per year in public revenues currently foregone to global tax abuse. In the process leading to the ‘Compromiso de Sevilla’ decided at FfD4, we proposed and succeeded in creating a specific human rights workstream within the Civil Society Financing for Development Mechanism, which was critical to ensure that explicit commitments on the matter were included in the negotiating outcome. In a context of cutbacks in multilateral institutions, we have amplified the capacities of technical experts, providing rigorous technical support and leveraging our influence to ensure the enactments of groundbreaking standard-setting instruments, such as the 2025 UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Statement on Fiscal Policy and Human Rights, and the first ex oficio hearing on the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights on Fiscal and Economic Policies to Address Poverty and Structural Inequality, leading to an upcoming thematic resolution on the matter. We have also bridged the silos between multilateral tax discussions and climate finance debates, promoting ambitious financing commitments to increase international and domestic resource mobilisation during COP 28, 29 and 30.

At the regional level, our engagement with fiscal cooperation platforms such as the Platform for Fiscal Cooperation of Latin America and the Caribbean (PTLAC), where we are member of its Civil Society Consultative Council, and the African Anti-IFFs Policy Tracker, for which we participated in the pilot mission in Ivory Coast together with Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), have been critical in cementing a growing engagement between tax administrations and ministries of finance with international legal experts, exploring actionable and transformative initiatives, such as the taxation of high-net-worth individuals, beneficial ownership registries and corporate countryby-country reports, to be implemented at the international level.

At the local level, our interventions in fiscal reform debates in Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Nigeria have contributed to shaping legislative outcomes in a more progressive, rights-compliant direction.

As for our leadership in narrative change, we have a measurable track record in delivering tailored, innovative campaigns which have decisively expanded economic justice constituencies by appealing to a broader tent. In Latin America and the Caribbean, we created the ‘Date Cuenta’ campaign, coordinating over 40 organisations across civil society to deliver plain language, innovative messaging connecting progressive fiscal reforms to the financing of health, education and social protection. ‘Date Cuenta’ generated over 55 original campaign messages that were tailored to the realities of seven priority countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Honduras) and disseminated in Spanish, Portuguese and English. In doing so, we convened more than 65 online co-creation workshops with partners, coordinating a unified communications strategy which combined digital outreach, press and media coverage, and collaboration with influencers. Ultimately, ‘Date Cuenta’ resulted in more than 60,000 interactions on social media, coverage in major regional and international media outlets, including El País, Deutsche Welle, Bloomberg and France 24, and the participation of at least 63 social media influencers through 58 dedicated publications. In collaboration with Fundación Gabo and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, we also organised a two-day workshop in Bogota with 20 journalists from 13 countries, building a regional network trained in a human rights-based approach to fiscal policy that has since generated published media coverage on outlets such as La Diaria, Ciper, El Diario Ar and Milenio. Through ‘Date Cuenta’ and our regional advocacy, we strengthened civil society engagement in key processes, including the Financing for Development track and FfD4, co-organised highlevel dialogues with states and civil society from Latin America and Africa.

What's next?

We will shape the UN Tax Convention and its Protocols so they embed human rights principles, and we will stay engaged through follow-up processes (including the expected Conference of the Parties) to support effective implementation. We will keep linking tax and climate finance so that new resources mobilised through fiscal cooperation are channelled to adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage, in line with UNFCCC commitments.

Public Services for Care Societies

We have translated participatory research into accountability and policy outcomes.

In Ivory Coast, our work with Mouvement Ivoirien des Droits Humains and affected communities since 2023 exposed how privatisation and lack of accountability restrict access to quality healthcare. It contributed to the closure of 1,022 illegal private health centres, an executive instrument strengthening the regulation of private hospitals across the country, and the creation of a permanent complaints management committee in healthcare through a bylaw issued by the prefect of Gagnoa. Partners engaged through this process also advanced concrete improvements at facility level: members of the Gagnoa Midwives Association who took part in the participatory action research pooled resources to renovate the neonatal unit of the Regional Hospital, and the Director of the Gagnoa General Hospital launched an action plan to expand services and improve patient reception, with the facility receiving the award for best hospital in the country in 2025.

In Kenya, our research with the Mathare Education Taskforce documented the absence of public schools and the expansion of private provision, evidencing impacts on households and caregivers and strengthening demands for free, quality public education. This work contributed to stronger community agency and collective organisation, alongside ongoing strategies ranging from communications to litigation to secure a public school in the area, some involving GI-ESCR and others led independently.

Across Africa, this work is complemented by a multi-country study examining the human rights implications of austerity in education and health, including how regressive fiscal policies, rising debt burdens and persistent underinvestment undermine the financing and delivery of public services.

In Latin America, from 29 November to 2 December 2021, over a thousand representatives from over one hundred countries, from grassroots movements, advocacy, human rights, and development organisations, feminist movements, trade unions, and other civil society organisations, met in Santiago, Chile, and virtually, to discuss the critical role of public services for our future. Following the meeting, the Santiago Declaration on Public Services was adopted to demand universal access to quality, gender-transformative and equitable public services as the foundation of a fair and just society.

We are currently advancing work on care systems, linking public services and fiscal justice through integrated research, advocacy and communications, including a regional campaign framing care as a collective responsibility requiring sustained public investment.

What's next?

In Ivory Coast, we will evaluate and strengthen the complaints management committee and position it as a replicable model for other health facilities. In Kenya, we will support the Mathare community to co-design a model public school for Mabatini and Ngei wards, grounded in human rights standards. Building on our multi-country austerity study, we will drive national advocacy on financing for education and health: advancing reforms in Ghana; launching a fiscal policy and public services financing agenda in Kenya through the CESCR process and targeted coalition work; and, in Nigeria, using the new tax acts in force since 1 January 2026 to catalyse a national accountability campaign for adequately funded, quality public services. In Latin America, we will amplify locally led care pilots across 8 countries and turn lessons into influence—advancing care policies that strengthen care organisations, protect care workers’ rights, support unpaid caregivers, include disability and family networks, and redistribute care more equitably.