UN expert on the right to education to visit UNESCO

GENEVA (13 January 2023) - The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Farida Shaheed, will visit UNESCO Headquarters in Paris from 16 to 20 January 2023.

The expert will discuss issues related to the realisation of the right to education, such as the cultural dimension of the right to education, freedoms in education, teachers’ rights, life-long learning and current trends of education commercialisation and digitalisation.

The Special Rapporteur will meet with UNESCO officials from all sectors of the organisation, UNESCO Institutes and non-governmental organisations.
The expert will share her preliminary observations with the media on 20 January 2023 and be available for interviews.

Shaheed will present her observations and recommendations to the Human Rights Council in June 2023.

ENDS

Ms. Farida Shaheed, from Pakistan, was appointed Special Rapporteur on the right to education in 2022. She is the Executive Director of Pakistan’s leading gender justice organization, Shirkat Gah - Women’s Resource Centre. She is also an independent expert/consultant to numerous U.N., international and bi-lateral development agencies, the government of Pakistan, as well as civil society initiatives, and serves on multiple international and national advisory committees. She served as a member of Pakistan’s National Commission on the Status of Women, and as the first Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights from 2009 to 2015.