This chapter critically analyses the idea of education as a universal human right. It outlines existing international human rights mechanisms which have relevance to education as a right and discusses contemporary multilateral attempts by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other campaigning organisations to promote the recognition and realisation of a universal right to education. It assesses some of the possibilities and difficulties of making the right to education a reality in a world of social, economic, cultural, ideological and political diversity, different levels of ‘peace’, stability, governmental organisation and conflict, changing contexts and circumstances. While recognising that the right to education includes all people regardless of age, the chapter mainly focuses on education as a right for children and, in particular, how the right to education for children can be affected by violent conflict. It considers some of the problems faced and suggests that for the right to education to be realised the context in which education takes places needs to be considered.

International human rights and the right to education

While the idea of a right to education, especially for children, had been progressively developed in most industrialised nation-states by the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with state provision of schooling, it was not until after World War II and the development of the United Nations (UN) in 1945, that the idea of education as a universal human right began to be considered in any substantive way.

The UN's focus on maintaining global peace and cooperation (Page, 2008: 75– 83), together with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, became ‘central pillars of post-war multilateralism’ (Mundy, 1998: 452). They would also go on to have a significant impact in the development of a universal right to education. In 1946 two further organisations were established which were also to play an important role, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) – initially to provide nutrition and healthcare to the many European children facing post-war poverty – and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which, by 1948, had recommended that member states make primary education free, compulsory and universal (Bailliet and Larsen, 2015; UNESCO, 2010).