Adopted during the second UNESCO World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education (WCECCE) on 16 November 2022, the Tashkent Declaration and Commitments to Action for Transforming Early Childhood Care and Education refers to the Abidjan Principles on the human rights obligations of States to provide public education and to regulate private involvement in education (hereafter: Abidjan Principles) in the list of ‘ pioneering international and regional initiatives and statements’ applying to ECCE (para. 8).
Adopted in 2019, the Abidjan Principles are a reference text on the right to education and are increasingly used in a range of national contexts and across disciplines to clarify states’ obligations and provide guidance in the context of the growing involvement of private actors in education. In this regard, the Declaration also emphasises the importance of regulating ECCE personnel in the non-state sector, highlighting that ‘the sector is poorly regulated concerning the quality of the services and the qualifications, contractual and working conditions of personnel’ (para. 13. iii) and stresses that ‘legal frameworks should be built to ensure the Official Development Aid is used to support the implementation of public policies and strengthen State responsibility for ECCE’ (para. 14. ii).
In the context of private actors dominating ECCE provision, concerns related to the privatisation of ECCE and the need for regulating private actors were discussed in several sessions at the conference, showcasing the increasing relevance and usefulness of the Abidjan Principles. For example, Anna Cristina D’Addio, Senior Policy Analyst in the UNESCO GEM Report, emphasised how non-state actors dominate care and education services for children under age three, noting that non-state provision has increased in pre-primary education, from 28.5% in 2000 to 37% in 2019. Referring to the 2021/22 GEM report on non-states actors, she stressed that non-state provision of ECCE remains unaffordable for families. As access depends a lot on family wealth, the most at-risk children are left behind. She pointed out that the regulations tend to focus on administrative requirements related to registration, approval, or licensing and indicated that the GEM report recommends designing laws, policies and programmes with an equity and inclusion lens.
Nicolai Stensig, Senior Advisor at Union of Education Norway, speaking on behalf of Education International, also warned against the negative impact of privatisation on the right to quality early childhood education (ECE) and on the ECE personnel’s working conditions. He stated: ‘The privatization of early childhood education impacts the autonomy of the ECE workforce. They cannot adapt the pedagogical resources to their concept or to the children. We know ECE must be of quality, it is a public good. All ECE workers must have the same professionalization level.’
In the non-state actors forum, Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director General for Education at UNESCO, struck a note of caution, stating that ‘we don’t want the private sector to replace States but complement their efforts in realising ECCE rights for all’. This is exactly what the Guiding Principle 48.a of the Abidjan Principles states.
Last but not least, in her statement presenting the multi-stakeholders joint commitment, Mercedes Mayol highlighted the importance of the Abidjan Principles, recalling that ‘they provide guidelines for states to define the public service obligations of non-state actors involved in education to ensure their contribution to the realization of the right to education, avoiding inequalities or adverse effects.