The Coalition for Transparency and Accountability in Education (COTAE), has urged the Liberian government to fund the educational sector as well as regulate the involvement of the private actors in the sector.
Making the call through their spokesperson, the Executive Director of Centre for Transparency and Accountability, Mr. Anderson Miamen, the coalition said that the current unregulated involvement of private school operators in Liberia’s education sector is unacceptable and requires immediate action. The spokesperson of the coalition said, ‘COTAE wants the ongoing programmes and activities of stakeholders in the sector, especially the Ministry of Education, to be guided by international and local laws and policies governing the sector, including the Abidjan Principles that provide clear direction on how states should engage with private and for-profit actors in the sector’.
Miamen said that the Abidjan Principles underscore the human rights obligations of states to provide public education and to regulate private involvement in education in Liberia. He went on to say, ‘[T]he principles are based on existing human rights treaties and conventions, which include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Right of the Child and the Convention against All Forms of Discrimination in Education’. Miamen noted that Liberia is a signatory to all those treaties and conventions. He further observed that the acceptance of the Abidjan Principles by stakeholders, as an additional global framework to govern education in the country is not surprising, as international human rights laws require states to provide quality public education and leave room for private actors to offer educational alternatives.
Miamen also called on civil society, media and citizens to remain engaged with activities in the education sector, demand accountability from government and for government to uphold the right to education of all citizens, especially the poor that need quality education to lift them out of poverty.
Source: Liberian Observer
Photo source: Alan Levine
