Invest in SDG 4.7 to Unleash the Transformative Power of Education | HLPF 2022 Lab | Full Report
The event is sponsored by the Salvation Missions and colleagues from the Claritin Society, the Society of Jesus, the IBVM, Sisters of Charity Federation, and the Society of the Sacred Heart.
- Thomas Pallithanam
SDG 4.7 tells us by 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among other things, through education for sustainable development, sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence global citizenship and appreciation for cultural diversity, etc.
Today we are more educated. Today there are more educated people in the world than yesterday, and tomorrow there will be more than today, and yet inequality grows in leaps and bounds. I think we should question why this happens?
So very often in the past that engineers built the gas chambers at the time of the Nazis' doctors; they did that in human experiments on human beings. Nurses administered lethal injections to little children. They were all educated. Why does this happen? And something that remains in my mind is that the global community has not invested sufficiently in SDG 4.7, where 4.7 intends to make the patient transformative that doesn't happen.
- Father Michelangelo
General counselor for Youth Pastoral Reverent
Don Bosco, our founder, was a person who committed to an educational approach and became a great builder of educational works for the new generations to whom he transmitted many values through schools to culture and professional training. His boys were trained to be upright and competent workers, social actors with great civil sense and active citizenships, and moral message for the times, and of course, and now for us, it's necessary to fine-tune an intellectual and emotional intuition of the world of youth especially of the most abandonments.
We are already present in 134 countries with more than 3 000 schools, 700 event centers, 90 high educational centers, and more than 1000 centers on service dedicated to the most needed youth population. We deeply believe that education is no longer effective if it is not holistic.
Society must take it possible for all people to receive an integral education based on dialogue on the responsible use of freedom of the discovery and development of the skill. We have autonomy as a capacity for service regulation of each of us on empathy towards other people. In short, its interest is to turn us into citizens with balance feelings and the possibility of developing our competencies.
I believe that this is the frame of reference for the meeting we are studying now the values of the sustainable development goals. Without these values, education cannot be transformative. We know the more the jungle is dedicated to values, the better they can work to make this world a better place where peace and justice reign and where no one is left behind, and this is also the message that the public contained in his call for a global compact on education.
I think more than any other, SDG 4.7 refers to the social, humanistic, and moral purpose of education, explicitly links education to other SDGs, and captures the transformative aspirations of the new global development agenda.
- Barbara Terenzi
The Advocacy Officer
- Miss Paulina Pandiyo Tandiono
The UN Office for High Commission Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva
Coordinator of the World Program for Human Rights Education
In this event, we will discuss further in-depth target 4.7, which covers an important area of work at OHR human rights education and training.
Our office basically works to promote design and deliver human rights education and training through our various field presences worldwide and our headquarters in Geneva.
Now the international community has increasingly expressed consensus on the fundamental contribution of human rights education to the realization of human rights provisions on human rights education have been incorporated into many international instruments and documents, including, as you can see on the slide, the universal declaration of human rights and not only there.
Other international treaties also include provisions on human rights education, including ICSR, the international covenant on economic social and cultural rights convention against torture.
Now recognizing the importance of human rights education, the UN general assembly proclaimed the 10-year period of the UN decade for human rights education to build and strengthen programs and capacities for human rights education and international regional, national, and local levels.
Starting from 1995 to 2004, basically called on all states and institutions to include human rights, humanitarian law, democracy, and the rule of law as subjects in the curricula of all learning institutions in both formal and non-formal settings now at the end of the decade in 2000. Around 2003 and 4 our office conducted a study on the follow-up to the decade as well as drafted a report on its achievements and shortcomings based on the information contained in the studies and reports, the UN general assembly proclaimed the world program for human rights education in 2004 which started in 2005. Until today the World Program is aimed at advancing the implementation of human rights education programs in all sectors and is structured in consecutive phases.
It states that human rights education and training provide persons with knowledge skills and understanding and develops their attitudes and behaviors to empower them to contribute to the building and promotion of a universal culture of human rights.
Basically, effective human rights education not only develops knowledge about human rights and the mechanisms that protect them; it also develops skills and attitudes needed to promote, defend and apply human rights in daily life, building on the specific context of the learner's human rights education also fosters a sense of common humanity as well as solidarity and therefore promotes respect for the diversity it supports critical thinking and offers solutions to the challenges that people face - solutions that are consistent with human rights principles. And it encourages everyone to participate in the collective realization of human rights by promoting a rights-based approach to education. Human rights education also enables the education system to fulfill its fundamental mission, which is to secure quality education for all, which is also a go for all of the SDGs.
Now the World Program and the SDGs and, of course, its predecessor, the UN decade for human rights education, have contributed to efforts dedicated to achieving the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, especially goal 4.
The World Program provides practical guidance in implementing commitments made by member states in the UN declaration on HRBT. In its resolution, the human rights council also emphasizes education and training in equality of human rights, non-discrimination inclusion, and respect for diversity to build inclusive and peaceful societies. One thing I would like to highlight here is that the council also aligned the fourth phase of the world program with specifically target 4.7 of SDGs on inclusive, quality, and equitable education.
In the context of the work program, OHCHR has been presenting to the council, the evaluation reports of the different face states have been reporting that they have put in place systemic human rights education strategies in line with the world program guidance involving our policies training of education personnel curricula textbook development, etc.
However, one thing that we notice - we rely on uneven reporting practices from states and often on very anecdotal evidence in terms of capturing progress in the area of human rights education and training; therefore, there is indeed a need for a more solid methodology for the international community to be able to collect and share advancement and good practice to inspire more effective action so this is why we have been supporting the Danish institute for human rights.
For example, the conceptualization and development of a human rights education indicator framework for target 4.7 will assist the implementation of the world program and the goal of quality education. By fostering inclusion and participation, promoting solidarity, and preventing violence and conflict, human rights education constitutes a powerful strategic investment for building a just, peaceful, and equitable future for all.
Quote from the UN secretary-general in his report Our Common Agenda
“Quality education is in the foundation for tolerance, peace, human rights, and sustainable development, and therefore it is important to invest in quality education including human rights education to unlock progress towards SDGs to leave with no one behind.”
- Henry Tifagne
A program through which we all grew, and as we grew, we came to hear about the story and the foundation that Paulina just spoke of about the world about the UN decade for human rights education. Students like me who have always taken the back bench in the classroom started working with teachers towards putting the human rights that we spoke about into practice in schools, and there was the inaugural of what we call the institute of human rights education, which one major partner was.
Let me remind you of the content of our human rights education, and the partners were very serious in their human rights, which has led another partner from Maharashtra to settle word to be in jail today. 2 million students in 22 states of this country partnered with a variety of actors.
Human rights cannot be a monopoly! Human rights are best done when we partner, and human rights education was that while we define education, thus we are all painfully aware that it is a distant vision. Education has never been the engine for furthering the human rights of every human being at any time in our history, and therefore it became very difficult for us to able to bring our curriculum in a manner that would be appreciated by students.
Our curriculum had to have stories but the stories of those who are forgotten in society because those were the students who would listen to their teachers. The stories that are never spoken of on campuses are the people who are never referred to in our textbooks. The people who were focused on their versions and their hard stories became the basis of our human rights education that was undertaken by teachers inside classrooms. Later, of course, it went outside the classroom into clubs as well, and what is important for us is to understand that the teacher underwent a transformation. As much as a student underwent the transformation, the books that came out were not books that were confined to the classrooms. The books were read by parents, the books were read by siblings the books were challenged at home. The patriarchy that existed within the family was being challenged, and thus this human rights education that was confined technically to a classroom spread into the school campus and from the school campus into the homes of the students and the villages of the students bringing a lot of change which I think was necessary for our country but the impacts were amazing to us.
The impacts that it brought were really amazing. The stories of transformation of human rights education of questions asked that were never asked before the silences that were broken. The voices that were raised a little hand of help extended; adults were shamed in homes, alcoholics transformed in homes where gender-based violence continued on the mother, a silently suffering mother surprised by a little son confronting the drunken father daughters of year three patriarchate communities. Daring to demand education, I can go on the stories that were shocking.
I have been prevented from continuing with this program for obvious reasons, which we don't need to go here. What is important is that my colleagues have taken up the batten, and this is how it moves today. Human rights education has been transformed into constitutional rights education, and my colleagues have taken it forth to ensure that you can stop a Henry from moving, you can put a tv star into prison, but you cannot stop human rights education; it will come up now through a constitutional rights education.
- Mr Sampat Kumar Nizamiyan
Student activist | Ex-National president of human rights club for both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state
Hello everyone! I am from India. I want to share my views and experience and journey as a human rights activist from my school days with the collaboration of Para organization, an organization that works to create awareness among children about their rights and gender and sensitivity in this way. These people's action for the rural awakening organization works in both states.
In 2016 Para Organization, with the help of the local state government, initiated a program on human rights education in government high schools. The main aim of this initiative is to bring awareness about child rights and human rights among students, and I appreciate the organization's efforts. It is a great experiment in the domain of human rights education.
In India, as a part of this program, the students themselves elect their student representatives in school and also, and they form committees at school levels and their work. They work for their human rights at various levels - the committees are formed at the mundane, district, and state and national levels. The students should elect their leaders as their representatives, and then they use it to form committees at every level; in this way, they form student networks, and after that, we use you to work as a team for our rights.
Para organization is a great political educator why because, along with our human rights along with ourselves, we came to know about the democratic electoral process and how to elect our leaders ourselves, and para conducted many camps to bring awareness among students at state and national levels and at the national level they have conducted two main camps in Hyderabad and along with my friends I also attended there. We enhanced our knowledge, and also it gave a great exposure to society. Then we learned about human rights history and generated history, and also, we came to know about the international organizations like UNO Amnesty International and Red Cross societies which are working for human rights on wall street and, at the same time, children's welfare.
Committees and juvenile justice board and many introverts which are working all over India for children and we engaged there with third gender persons who were fighting for their rights for their dignity, and we talked with them, and at the same time we engaged with many NGO activists we spoke with them, and it gave great exposure to us.
At the same time, we interacted with the local political representatives and officials working in the domain. This gave us greater exposure to cell rates and human rights, and see one thing is that knowing things and also it is not enough when we put them into practice and then it will be very fruitful.
In recent times, I want to bring that India's human rights and civil liberties are in severe danger. The intellectuals who are fighting for their rights and liberties are stamped as anti-nationals, and they are sent to jail, and they are threatened. This is a dangerous signal for individual liberties and rights in India. It is not a good signal for a democratic country, and the government's despotic acts are now threatening the basic constitutional structure as we know that the French revolution slogan “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” which is inspired many constitutions right now to threaten in India. To save these constitutional values, we should be stood for our rights as a community, and for this, awareness is very important in India.
- Ms. Lily Gray
Officer and Education Program specialist with UNESCO in the New York
The spread of violent and hateful ideologies, youth unemployment, rising intolerance, and, of course, we see that almost everywhere in the world, we are facing climate change-related challenges, and indeed the message is clear sustainable development and peace are inconceivable without deep and far-reaching challenges in society, the economy, our relationship with the natural world and assumption built into the traditions of our cultural values and behaviors. These required changes represent a huge learning challenge for humanity, and education has a role to play in promoting that change.
Let me refer to the secretary general's quote and his intention to put forward a strong emphasis on education as a certain pathway to tackle global challenges. As some of you might know, Secretary General is convening a transforming education summit in September, and we just came back from a free summit that was held at UNESCO'S headquarters in Paris, where we hosted more than 2 000 participants, including 115 ministries, ministers of education who really put the focus on the role of education for transforming our societies.
They work on particular action tracks to advance this transformation within the education systems and then spread the changes and transformation across them across our societies; of course, SDG 4.7 is indeed a key target within the approach to education.
For us, for UNESCO, we consider SDG for SDG 4.7 as transformative education as it involves teaching and learning that motivates and empowers learners to make informed decisions and actions at the individual community and global levels with the focus on sustainability, global citizenship, health, and well-being for all transformative education implies ensuring that curriculum pedagogy, learning materials, schools, and learning environments are meaningful for the social-political economic cultural and environmental context and actively contribute to building a just and sustainable future in this perspective education is more and more discussed beyond the long-established tradition of receiving or giving systematic instructions.
It instead focuses on life-long learning and encourages learners to think for themselves but also of themselves as agents of change and see themselves as part of society and the global community.
SDG 4.7, if solidified and systematically implemented, will help achieve not only sustainable development but also help the environmental environment focus on GOALS 6 13 14 as well as goal 16 on governance and peace. Because SDG 4.7 helps transform the education sector so that it can fully deliver teaching and learning by engaging the head and hands, and hearts of learners through developing critical competencies such as critical thinking, systematic thinking, and collaboration, learners are expected to understand the complexity of sustainable development; how the global challenges are interconnected; and also be equipped with acting skills in order to contribute to problem-solving in their daily context as far as education for sustainable development.
Some of you might know we have had a decade that lasted until 2014, a dedicated education for sustainable development now we were adopting the global framework in 2019, and already last year, we had a big berlin declaration adopted by more than Eighty countries committed to developing and implementing ESD for 2030.
Country initiatives, member states are working on designing and implementing in close collaboration with partners in education for sustainable development as part of the follow-up UNESCO is in the process of establishing the ESD for 2030 global network acknowledging the importance of mainstreaming, promoting, and accelerating education for sustainable development. UNESCO works with member states and partners to invite them to join the network and collaborate with UNESCO and other education and sustainable development partners under this framework.
UNESCO'S goal is to raise knowledge awareness and action for green transition in a time of climate crisis, for example, and for this, we've launched a flagship focus on greening curricula and greening every school to integrate ESD and climate change education in the policies curriculum teacher training and schools of member states by 2030.
A strong focus on climate change requires a whole government and a whole society approach as well as each of the transformative education angles and to support member states. UNESCO has developed various guidance on getting schools climate ready and piloted various materials in more than 300 UNESCO-associated schools in 50 countries. The results showed that this holistic approach helped to transform all aspects of school life, from teaching and learning to how the school is managed and interacts with the local community.
- Mr. Daniel Perel
Representative to the UN of the Baha’L International community
Co-chair of the coalition for the UN
We're advocating and talking about goal 4.7 in particular. When we refer to education, we're talking about literacy and numeracy, the number of students who stay in school for a given amount of time; the infrastructure for school; the schools themselves; and while these are vital dimensions that require ample deliberation, there’re, in a sense, the tools required to form an educated citizenry.
With these tools in the 20th century, the time when education as we understand it today really came into its own, it was framed by a couple of underlying principles. First, education is vital for economic growth and success. It's a means for greater employment. It can increase patriotism and cultural harmony and create sort of a shared uh societal ethos; these principles are still true today.
So what is meant to be actually additive, not replacing it. The realities of the world 21st century are that, of course, it is globally interconnected. Our challenge is more than ever, and this trend will continue - they're global. We have climate change. We have pandemics and voluntary migration. You name the issue, and it crosses borders, so that means we need to add principles to the purpose of education and these are really well articulated in goal 4.7 human rights education for sustainable development and global citizenship education.
These are sort of new pillars that have evolved century, and it is this last one, global citizenship education, that can often be the most challenging because, unlike the other two, it could actually be perceived as a threat to the patriotic goal of education the shared society goal moreover and similarly even the concept of itself what is global citizenship.
It wins less agreement in terms of its definition, but these challenges are sort of related to both nationalism and the definitional dimension of global citizenship. They're difficult, but they're far easier to overcome than the challenges we would face if we don't take our interconnectedness into account levels of our education systems. In other words, while the tools of our education system remain the same - literacy, numeracy, time in school, and the like - the goals are actually different.
Again, I’m conscious of the time I’m nearing an education system that focuses on solving problems in our community in addition to literacy and numeracy and alike can actually transform schools and youth programs into protagonists of changing themselves.
In Vanuatu, this can look like engaging local elders to help revive defeated fish stocks where there are plenty of examples; it looks like community farms urban farms in Sierra Leone; it looks like youth making a film to inform their community about effective health measures that it makes these more accessible to their friends and neighbors.
How little global citizenship education is applied in varying circumstances is actually as diverse as the tapestry of the human family itself but to ask now is what will it look like in your community and how can we encourage national and regional, and even global education systems and curricula to embrace this new reality in which we find ourselves and create an education system commensurate with the needs we have today.
- Almudena
Salesian Missions in the Department of Global Citizenship Education
We provide quality education to the most vulnerable youth, and we are in 135 countries in Spain. We work with youth and educators informal and non-formal education, doing projects on promoting peace culture and global citizenship education; four years ago, we started to focus our projects on preventing violence, especially hate speech.
There are five definitions of pits, so I’m going to use the UN’s hater speeches any kind of communication in a speech writing or behavior that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language concerning a person or a group based on who they are in other words based on the religion ethnicity nationality race color descent gender or other identity factors.
Why are we focused on this? Hate crimes in Spain have been increasing in the last seven years. These crimes have grown by nine percent data confirms that we've seen an objective and constant increase in hate crimes for years, and we can also see this tendency in other European countries.
Internet and social media are the most used means to commit hate crimes, so we ask ourselves, are the young people in our schools and youth center suffering this if we talk about dresses in a government study in which 230 entities and African descent people participate despite the high proportion of participate participants born in Spain - 47 percent and with Spanish nationality.
71-60 percent say they do not feel they are of Spanish nationality because they are not recognized as such or because of their skin color. They are constantly questioned about their origins. Some explain that discrimination is a constant in their lives experience that caused them to consider Spain a racist country. If we talk about homophobia, suicide attempts among LGBTIQ plus youth are three to five times more numerous than among Jews in general on average. Almost 50 LGBTI youth commit suicide in a Spanish year, and another 950 LGBTIQ youth attempt; one in three adolescents admit they have suffered abuse control by their boyfriend.
I’m going to move on as an educator. We must give a good quality education that improves cultural peace and non-violence by increasing critical thinking and a sense of belonging to a diverse global world. We have to accompany the youth in the offline and also in the online spaces.
This photo was taken in worship. I did the youth made it, and also the idea of the title was embedded by them they wanted to show how connected we are but at the same time how disconnected so um how can we what strategies can we use raising awareness make them understand that this is a real problem that we need to change encouraging social media influencers also to help us with this spaces for dialogue creating a space where they can express their concerns about what they see in social media emotional education behind hate speech.
Their emotions such as fear, conflict prevention, and transformation - we must give them tools to solve conflicts through dialogue and group cohesion and expect to spend time improving the sense of belonging to a community where they feel love and care.
Social commitment allows the youth to design and develop projects that promote peace with a global approach in their communities because all we see is an example of dystopias. We encourage youth to dream of the world they want, creating initiatives that promote a fairer world and spread them on social media and in their communities that have spread love based on human rights values such as empathy and a positive message that values diversity.
These initiatives spread narratives based on love values such as empathy and a positive message that values diversity so that examples of peace culture gain space in public discourse. My recommendation will be to promote projects that unite the private companies that own social media with NGOs and the government.
- Mrs. Mariana Knirsch
Development Officer with the German Federal Ministry of economic cooperation and development
Germany is a big donor in education support around the world and I'm very happy to share some of our insights that we have gained and our focus is that we are putting on education so education for sustainable development promotes the respect for nature democracy non-discrimination equity gender equality and this is all things that we are tackling in our development corporation not only in the development in not only the education programs but much broader so it's therefore a sustainable development education part of the holistic approach to education that Germany is guided by and it's considered at all educational level whether it's pre-primary primary secondary school education or higher education as well and human rights education as well as an integral part of education for sustainable development as it is confirmed in the SDG 4.7 and it seeks to build up knowledge value skills in the rights that each person is entitled to it's one of the most transformative human rights education is one of the most transformative human rights and it's indispensable to exercise all the other human rights.
However, we are seeing more and more shrinking spaces. We also see that human rights education is especially at risk for marginalized groups person,s with disabilities, girls, and women, and people living in fragile contexts. With the development of the rights-based approaches, inclusive education becomes mandatory and can no longer be considered a luxury 15 percent of the world population live with disabilities.
Currently, persons with disabilities often have no access to education in developing countries. Only 46 of boys with disabilities and 33% of girls with disabilities finish primary school.
By signing up for the SDGs, as we all did, we have to commit to leaving no one behind, which needs to be put into practice. Gender equality with our new government is at the very heart of human rights and our policies to achieve gender equality.
We are pursuing a feminist development policy that is looking at strengthening the rights of representation and access to resources for women and girls and all their diversity. Therefore at the G7 that Germany is leading this year, we have agreed to support resilient, inclusive, and gender transformative education systems. We must overcome discriminatory social norms that prevent women and girls from realizing their education rights.
In line with an intersectional approach, we pay special attention to women and girls who face multiple discrimination, especially in crisis contexts. Especially in this crisis and fragile context, schools provide a safe environment, and they often are the only place where children have access to water sanitation and meals.
Therefore, education in emergencies and protector crisis is a priority for Germany worldwide. Currently, 222 million school-aged children and young people are affected by the crisis. Reliable and sustainable funding is urgently needed to respond to that.
We support a wide range of civil society organizations working in the field of education. For example, a civil peace service is a German-funded consortium of civil society and church-based organizations working worldwide with local partners to prevent violence and promote peace, so for a recommendation for an effective and efficient education system for sustainable development, the inclusion of all stakeholders is of utmost importance especially involving local civil society organization expertise in all project planning, and implementation is needed.
Source High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, Lab Goal 17, June 13
Special regards to Good Shepherd Sisters Thailand for sharing an invitation with Neya Global to attend the educational lab