widespread bias against educating girls or children with disabilities. Students’ enrollment may be impeded by the closure of universities because of political or financial reasons. An endless variety of real-life issues ceaselessly force domestic courts, human rights commissions, or international human rights bodies to clarify the nature and scope of the right to education through the corresponding governmental obligations. The right to education is recognized, promoted and protected at all levels – from local to global – and it fully reflects the interplay between the dual processes of globalization and localization which are now taking place. In most federal countries, education pertains to the remit of regional or local authorities and the current trend towards decentralization furthers the localization of education. The parallel process of globalization substantively affects only the uppermost levels of the education pyramid. Primary education remains local and this is unlikely to change. However, the financial impact of globalization affects the whole education pyramid, while its ideological underpinning tends to treat education as an industry,2 which provides a service that should be traded just like any other, domestically and internationally. The role of the government in education, affirmed in international and domestic human rights law, provides a powerful antidote against the risk of depleting education of remaining a public good and schooling of remaining a public service. The full mobilization of the existing human rights standards for education can neutralize 2 Tooley, J. – The Global Education Industry. Lessons from Private Education in Developing Countries, International Finance Corporation and Institute of Economic Affairs, Washington D.C. and London, 1999. negative dimensions of globalization at all levels, thus enabling the human rights community to provide a useful and timely contribution to developments which were, until recently, deemed to lie beyond the reach of human rights safeguards. The right to education straddles the division of human rights into civil and political, on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural, on the other hand. It embodies them all. Governmental obligation to respect parental freedom of choice or free establishment of schools typifies civil and political contents of the right to education; denials of freedom of and in education are challenged throughout the world.3 3 The human rights guarantees for religion affirm the freedom of religion but not freedom in religion. The Human Rights Committee has examined the case of a teacher who ‘had been engaged in a protracted confrontation with the authorities over his teaching and his employment,’ to determine that his rights were violated by constant harassment which made his continued teaching impossible. The background to the case was the denial of his certification by ecclesiastic authorities. A certificate of suitability, issued by the Catholic Church, is needed for any teacher of religion and the Church verifies that religious education is provided in accordance with the precepts of the Catholic Church. The Committee has agreed that the teacher’s removal from teaching religion was necessitated by his lack of certificate, which was occasioned by his advocacy of liberation theology. This was beyond the influence of the Committee or the government of the country concerned. However, the Committee has added that he could not prevented from continuing in public service teaching. (Human Rights Committee – William Eduardo Delgado Paez v. Colombia, Communication No. 195/1985, Views of 12 July 1990.) Differently from freedom of religion, the human rights guarantees relating to education affirm both freedom of education (requiring governments to allow non-state schools) and freedom in education (requiring governments to recognize the rights of parents, teachers and learners in education, including their rights to question and challenge school curriculum, textbooks, methods of instruction, rules for school discipline or their administration and enforcement). Right to Education Primers No. 3 9