Human Rights: Article 26

“Everyone has the right to education,” according to Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nevertheless according to UNESCO one out of three children never see the inside of a classroom. Is this a consequence or a cause of poverty? Is this a cause and a consequence?

In most cases, in developing countries poor families struggle to survive each day, there is poor birth control and their children are forced to start working as soon as they can, why? Due to gender discrimination, in countries where women find it hard to find a job, or they find themselves stuck at home having to take care of their children, men are the only sustain of the family, should this be this way?

Boys start working at a very early age and never go to their first school day. Do you remember the first day you went to school? I can barely remember things, but that day I started building my future. This is a topic that most students never stop to think about. We complain a lot about school, work, our teachers, and we don’t think, we don’t know that there are millions of children that can only dream about it. Children that are born poor cannot possibly change their situation without receiving education. Is this the cause or the consequence of poverty?

Education is the only way out of poverty for many people. How can developing nations progress with an illiterate population? One of the Millennium Development goals of the UN is to achieve universal primary education. It is the second of the eight goals of the UN, right after the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger. This seems to be considered an extremely important subject by many nations of the world, so why is it that there are a hundred million children that don’t go to school? At the current rhythm there will still be forty seven million that don’t enjoy the privilege of education by 2015. This numbers are easy to say, but we should realize that they are more than just numbers. Those numbers mean that by 2015, there will still be 47 million lives condemned to poverty, 47 million faces that will rarely smile, 47 million children that won’t be able to say that they even had a childhood. According to data from the World Bank, while almost 95 per cent of European children have access to primary education, only 61 per cent of Sub-Saharan Africa access primary education. How can we hope for an equal world while this difference continues? How can we try to develop the economy of all this countries with such a difference? How will these children be able to access new technologies, how will they be able to fully develop themselves in a world that gets more competitive and knowledge-dependent each day?

Children need to be educated, by giving them education you are giving them the chance for a better life, for a healthy life, a life with hope, by giving them education you are giving them the happiness that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Primary education opens the doors of their future, a future in which hopefully some day ignorance, poverty, and hunger will disappear. These are important issues, and they are definitely worth fighting for.

Sebastian Monzón

1º Bachillerato