Sifaan Zavahir

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Sifaan Zavahir (b. 1976) is a Sri Lankan democratic educator credited, along with Henning Graner, with discovering the discrepancies between the common understanding of compulsory education (viz. compulsory schooling) and the original intention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) as evidenced by the minutes of the drafting committee.

The discovery led to an international campaign #clarifycompulsoryeducation:

Did you know that there are at least two completely different interpretations for the word ‘compulsory’ in education? For many people it has come to mean governments forcing parents to force children to attend school. [...] The Committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first international recognition of Education as a Right, explicitly stated that “elementary education shall be compulsory” meant that “no one (neither the State, nor the family) could prevent the child from receiving elementary education and that the idea of coercion was in no way implied”. From a Human Rights perspective, ‘compulsory’ is about obliging every state to provide real access to good quality educational options to each and every child for free

For more see: Compulsory schooling was never to be compulsory

Sifaan is a founder of the only democratic school in Sri Lanka: Kinder Republic. His focus on Education as a Right.

Notably, Sifaan expressed support for the student strike. Students have the right to be heard in their fight for educational emancipation:

The strike is the right to freedom of expression and freedom of association

See also:

This glossary entry is used to explain "I would never send my kids to school" (2017-2024) by Piotr Wozniak