Privatisation

On Wednesday 28 April, RTE co-hosted a webinar in Arabic with the Arab Campaign for Education for All, as part of the wider programme of events in this year’s Global Action Week for Education.

Given shortfalls in public financing over the last few years, including for humanitarian aid in crisis situations, private actors have increasingly become involved in emergency education programs.

The National Campaign for Education Nepal (NCE), a national education coalition of 409 civil society organizations, has been working at the national and grassroots level on the implementation of the Abidjan Principles since their adoption in February 2019. In the context of COVID-19, more than 2,500 stakeholders including policy makers have been sensitised on the need to regulate the private actors during the pandemic, and the importance of the State obligations with regard to strengthening public education.

The case of the sale of public schools in Mauritania to private entrepreneurs and the associated privatisation of education, which civil society has been documenting and exposing since 2018, took a new turn on 27 July 2020 with the publication of a new report by the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission on the presidency of Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the former President who was ousted from power in August 2019.