PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
This article is part of the Research TopicThe right to education and addressing inequalities: Examining new forms of privatisation, impact of digitalisation and learning in crisis situationsView all 8 articles
The role of the Committee on the Rights of the Child in Strengthening Accountability for Attacks on Education in Armed Conflict
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
- 2Universiteit Leiden, Leiden, Netherlands
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Education is increasingly under attack in situations of armed conflict, with increasing incidence of schools bombed, repurposed for military use, education politicized, and children denied access to learning. This opinion piece examines how the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC Committee) is responding to these violations by integrating international humanitarian law (IHL), international human rights law (IHRL), international criminal law (ICL) and global accountability mechanisms into its recommendations. Drawing on recent concluding observations to the Russian Federation and Israel, the article highlights the Committee's evolving role in protecting children's right to education in conflict zones. It argues that the Committee is not only interpreting the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as a living instrument but also asserting its relevance within a broader legal and political context. The analysis concludes that the Committee remains a vital actor in the global effort to strengthen accountability in responding to attacks on education.
Keywords: Armed conflict, children's rights, committee on the rights of the child, Education, humanitarian law, International criminal law
Received: 07 Oct 2025; Accepted: 04 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Skelton. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ann Marie Skelton
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