UN WOMEN’S RIGHTS COMMITTEE HOSTS EVENT IN GENEVA ON RIGHT TO EDUCATION FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS

GENEVA (Issued as received) – Teachers, students, and education and human rights experts from around the world will on Monday gather at the Palais des Nations in Geneva for a half-day of discussion aimed at assisting the UN Committee on women’s rights to elaborate on the obligations of States to ensure the right to education for girls and women.

Among the keynote speakers at the event are Mariam Khalique, who was one of Malala Yousafzai’s teachers in Pakistan; student Hannah Godefa from Canada, who is UNICEF’s Goodwill Ambassador to Ethiopia; Kishore Singh, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education; Maki Katsuno-Hayashikawa from UNESCO; Vernor Muñoz from Plan International; Mohamed Y. Mattar, Executive Director of the Protection Project, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies; and Angela Melchiorre, an advisor to the Right to Education Project.

The event will be opened by Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Abdulaziz Almuzaimi, Director of the UNESCO Liaison Office in Geneva; and Marie-Pierre Poirier, Regional Director for UNICEF’s Regional Office for Central, Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The half-day of general discussion on girls’ and women’s rights to education is the first stage in a process undertaken by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to provide authoritative guidance to States on implementation of their obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to education for women and girls under article 10 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The event will be held on Monday, 7 July 2014, 10:00 - 13:00, in Room XVI at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

ENDS

To learn more about the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), visit: http://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/cedaw/pages/cedawindex.aspx

For more information and interview requests, please contact Mr. Lukas Machon ( lmachon@ohchr.org / + 41 22 917 91 70), Ravina Shamdasani (rshamdasani@ohchr.org / +41 22 917 9169 ) or Cecile Pouilly (cpouilly@ohchr.org / +41 22 917 9310 )
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For use of the information media; not an official record

CEDAW14/010E