Globalizing What: Education as a Human Right or as a Traded Service?

This article first reviews changes within international law, pointing out the advent of international trade in educational services and noting that negotiations about further liberalization of trade in education are ongoing. Since the majority of countries have not made any liberalization commitments yet, there is time for reaffirming the right to education. The practice of states, including their opinio juris in their liberalization commitments, overwhelmingly supports children’s right to free and compulsory education. This opens the way for introducing human rights correctives in the international law on trade in education. This article then turns to extralegal determinants of national educational laws and policies to ask whether for-fee and free public primary educational choices are policy-or poverty-based. Governmental reports required by human rights treaties are used as a key source, and they show that most governments highlight their inability, rather than unwillingness, to make or keep primary education free. Very few express their willingness to convert primary education into a traded service. Obstacles to the realization of the right to free education are examined next. The focus is on user charges in primary education and on the role of the World Bank in their introduction and justification. A global stocktaking of direct charges in public primary schooling based on primary sources follows. Governmental reports as the principal source of data required by human rights treaties are supplemented by reports on education and debt relief. Regional overviews highlight the concordance and discord between legal guarantees of free education and the current practice of states. The findings highlight how the incidence of direct charges does not depend only on the relative poverty of the particular country and region, as is often assumed. The government’s commitment to free public education and global support for that commitment play the decisive roles. The rollback of user fees with new or revived governmental commitments to free public primary education illustrates the potential for change. This article points out obstacles to further mobilization for change, suggests how these could be overcome, and emphasizes the contribution that applied human rights research can make in buttressing the increasing global commitment to human rights mainstreaming in global education and development finance strategies.Watch movie online The Transporter Refueled (2015)