Right to education handbook

Seventy years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recognizing the universal right to education for the first time. Since 1948, every single country in the world has ratified at least one human rights treaty guaranteeing the right to education or some aspect of the right to education and a great number of states have made efforts to enshrine the right to education in their highest legal order. More recently, the international community adopted the Sustainable Development Agenda in 2015, which established an ambitious and transformational vision to respond to the tremendous challenges to sustainable development, with the determination to ensure that no one is left behind. The ambitions of the 2030 Agenda for education are captured in Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), which seeks to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ by 2030. The Education 2030 Agenda is a political reaffirmation of the importance of, and continuing commitment to, the right to education.