Human Rights Council
Resolution 8/4.
The right to education
The Human Rights Council,
Reaffirming all previous resolutions of the Commission on Human Rights on the
right to education, inter alia, resolution 2005/21 of 15 April 2005,
Recalling that everyone shall enjoy the human right to education, which is
enshrined, inter alia, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the
Child and other pertinent international instruments,
Recalling also that in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, it is resolved
that children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of
primary schooling and that girls and boys will have equal access to all levels of education
by 2015, and emphasizing the importance of realizing the right to education in attaining
the Millennium Development Goals,
Affirming that the realization of the right to education, including for girls and
persons belonging to vulnerable groups, contributes to the eradication of poverty and of
racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,
Deeply concerned that some 72 million children, 57 per cent of whom are girls
and 37 million of whom live in conflict-affected fragile States, are out of school, and that
774 million adults, 64 per cent of whom are women, still lack basic literacy skills, despite
progress made in recent years towards achieving the goals of the Education for All
initiative agreed upon at the World Education Forum, held in Dakar in April 2000,