United Nations Commission on Human Rights, 11 April 2000

4 November 2000

Mr Chairman,

More than ten years after the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, basic rights, such as the right to education, are being denied to millions of children because of their belonging to minority communities.

Children belonging to some Chinese communities in South East Asia are a case in point. A new Minority Rights Group (MRG) report highlights the violations of human and minority rights suffered by Chinese communities and their children in South East Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam and Burma.

Children of Chinese origin in Malaysia, for instance, are discriminated in their right of access to education.

After independence, Chinese community schools, where Chinese was used as the main language, were not recognized by the Malay State education system. Those obtaining qualifications from such schools have been for decades denied access to higher education and to employment in the public sector. Chinese community schools have been denied public funding, which is available for other private education establishments.

Although state universities have officially established quotas of 55% Malay students, and 45% non-Malay, mostly Chinese, students, in reality the proportion of Malay students with reserved places at state universities is 70%. Every year thousands of ethnic Chinese students are denied a place at university solely on the basis of their ethnicity .More than 95% of the Malay government scholarships for foreign education are reserved for Malay or bumiputera students. The cost of sending their children to university abroad has meant that only few capable ethnic Chinese children have the opportunity of University education. State vocational institutions, alternative to university education, only accept bumiputera students.

Brazilian children of African descent are also often denied the right to education.

Despite Brazil' s early ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the inclusion of many of its principles in constitutional legislation and in the 1990 Estatuto da Crianca e do Adolescente (Statute of the Child and the Adolescent), measures to protect minority children's education rights are not sufficient.

The majority of Brazilians were shown in recent years to leave school without being able to read and write. As a result, more than half of the Afro-Brazilian population is illiterate.

Afro-Brazilian children are reported to be in many cases suffering from racial abuse not just by other children, but also by teachers and other school staff. Afro-Brazilian children are in most cases denied the right to receive an education that reflects their cultural and historical heritage. Few children's books and other educational material focus on themes of specific relevance to Afro-Brazilian children.

The selection system for access to university gives an advantage to those candidates who have benefited by a good secondary school education, seldom provided by State schools. Most University students are from privately-educated "white" backgrounds.

MRG supports some public and private initiatives which have in recent years started addressing these issues. The Ministry of Education's National Curriculum Parameters of 1997 aimed to introduce human rights education in the classroom. The project Generation 21, a partnership between government, private sector and activists from the Afro-Brazilian communities, aims to invest resources in the Afro-Brazilian youth, to enable them to gain access to better employment opportunities.

MRG urges the governments of Malaysia, and other countries in South East Asia, where discriminatory laws deny education rights for ethnic Chinese children, to take urgent measures to repeal or correct legislation and practice, in line with international standards for the respect of children and minority rights.

MRG also urges the Brazilian government to devise and implement a programme of action to specifically address the violation of Afro-Brazilian children's right to education, in preparation for the World Conference against Racism and its preparatory events.