The Network of National Human Rights Institutions, NNHRI, has called on ECOWAS and National Human Rights Institutions in the continent to take genuine steps to eliminate discrimination in education on the basis of gender. NNHRI also want Ecowas to pursue with more commitment and diligence, the implementation of its legal obligation of ensuring that women have access to education, science and technology and develop measurable benchmarks and indicators for ensuring that women have access to education by tracking progress made thereon.

The group in a statement by its Executive Secretary, Saka Azimazi and President, Alioune Ndiaye, also urged the regional body, to take the opportunity of this year’s international women’s day to renew their commitment to ensure and advance women’s rights to education as part of their domestic and international human rights obligations and also develop enduring legal framework for the enforcement of the right to education in country and at the sub-regional level. The group said, “every year, the UN celebrates March 8 as the International Women’s Day. This year is no exception. The benefits of education to the society and particularly of women and girls having equal access to it, is enormous. Conversely, the denial or discrimination against women or girls in having access to education is a major cause of under-development and increase in poverty. For us in West Africa, the factors that ensure that women have no access to education, cultural and historical, remain alive and exacerbating. It is important to note that social exclusion, especially discrimination against women in having access to education is a major contributory factor to economic poverty and political instability in our sub-region.

“Throughout all UN major human rights instruments, education is a right to which all member States of ECOWAS subscribe. Yet in our domestic or national affairs, obstacles and hurdles are put on the path of women to enjoy this basic right. According to official UN statistics, of the estimated 72 million children in the world who are not in school, girls are the majority. Girls are less likely than boys to be in school, and more likely than boys never to enroll in school at all. Early marriages and teenage motherhood is common place throughout our sub-region.