Time to champion free education

Thailand’s election on Oct 9 to the United Nations Human Rights Council positions the government to support children’s rights to education around the world, while showcasing the country’s own accomplishments.
Earlier this year, the Human Rights Council, the UN’s pre-eminent human rights body, initiated a process for a new international treaty to explicitly recognise every child’s right to early childhood education, free public pre-primary education, and free public secondary education.
The 1990 Convention on the Rights of the Child recognises a right to free and compulsory primary education. The proposed treaty would update that guarantee, recognising that in today’s world, free primary education alone is insufficient to prepare children to flourish and that the cost of education remains a barrier for many of the world’s children, especially at the pre-primary and secondary levels.
According to the latest statistics, 79% of Thai children are enrolled in pre-primary education, with 88% attending the last kindergarten year. About 90% of Thai children complete mandatory secondary classes and 71% finish secondary school. But globally, only 61% of children are in pre-primary education, and only 59% complete secondary school.
Brain development occurs most rapidly during early childhood. Quality preschool offers long-term benefits for children’s cognitive and social development, and their health. Pre-primary education facilitates children’s successful transition to primary school and improves their educational attainment.
It also promotes inclusivity, ensuring that children with disabilities receive the support they need from the outset while reducing discriminatory attitudes against them. Pre-primary education reduces inequality among children from varying socioeconomic backgrounds.
Secondary education, including technical and vocational training, equips young people with knowledge and skills crucial for their future success. It enables them to escape or avoid poverty by preparing them for well-paying jobs. Children with secondary education are more likely to adopt healthier diets, seek medical care, and have better mental health. Secondary education fosters political participation, reduces marginalisation, and empowers children to navigate modern technology. Ensuring consistent enrolment in secondary schools reduces child labour, child marriage, unintended pregnancies, and recruitment by armed groups.
Failing to provide free pre-primary and secondary education disproportionately harms girls and women. In certain parts of the world, parents with limited resources feel societal pressure to prioritise their boys’ education, so the cost of secondary education often prevents girls from attending school. Excluding children from preschool hinders parents — especially mothers — from engaging in the workforce or otherwise participating in public life.
The process to begin drafting the proposed new treaty strengthening children’s right to free education — known as an “optional protocol” — begins in 2025, during Thailand’s first year of Human Rights Council membership, and a completed draft could be delivered for the Council’s consideration and Thailand’s approval in 2026.
During this process, Thailand will have many opportunities to highlight its own successes and challenges in delivering its 15-Year Free Education Program, which since 2009 has supplemented the 12 years of free primary and secondary education guaranteed in the constitution with three years of free pre-primary education.
With 15 years of free education, Thailand and Laos provide the greatest number of years of free education among Asean countries. Enshrining the policy into national law — along with other long-awaited updates to Thailand’s education system — would demonstrate important progress on social and economic rights by the current government. As too would be ensuring that all migrant children in Thailand can also enjoy their rights to education.
Thailand also has special credibility for this international treaty process: Thailand was among the countries that led the drafting of the previous update to the Convention on the Rights of the Child — which enables children to bring complaints about violations of their rights to an international forum — and was the first Asian country to ratify that optional protocol. This means Thailand’s diplomatic corps has useful technical expertise they can bring to the current initiative.
During its campaign for a seat at the Human Rights Council, Thailand made pledges about what it would achieve with the role. Among them was to “actively and constructively” engage in negotiations developing international human rights instruments.
Strong vocal support for a new treaty strengthening the right to free education for children around the world would be a meaningful way to deliver on this commitment, and use Thailand’s recently won role for the good of the world’s children.
Bede Sheppard is deputy children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.