The Right to ECCE

In 1990, the Jomtien Declaration for Education For All stated that learning starts at birth. Ten years later, the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action reaffirmed this and 180 world leaders signed up to the Education For All goals – and Goal One is expand early childhood care and education.

In 2010, another decade later, UNESCO held the first global conference Goal One in Moscow, producing a final statement that recognized that children’s right to early childhood care and education begins at birth.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) states that ‘everyone has the right to education’. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which is the most extensive international treaty on the rights of children, commits states to ensuring the rights of all children on the basis of equal opportunity. The UN Committee on the CRC presents a holistic view on childhood calling on states to recognize that children are active participants in decisions affecting them and to pay special attention to the neglected area of early childhood.

Despite the reaffirmation of the rights of the child to education, little progress has been made to achieving this for the youngest.

Campaign demands