VERNOR MUÑOZ VILLALOBOS APPOINTED UN SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON RIGHT TO EDUCATION

(Reissued as received.)

GENEVA, 30 August (UN Information Service) -- United Nations Commission on Human Rights Chairman Mike Smith has appointed Vernor Muñoz Villalobos of Costa Rica as Special Rapporteur on the right to education.  The appointment was made on 13 July 2004 in consultation with representatives of the different regional groups in the Commission.

Mr. Muñoz Villalobos, who is currently serving in the Costa Rican Ombudsman’s Office, teaches at the Latina University of Costa Rica as Professor of Civil Rights.  Mr. Muñoz Villalobos is also an advisor on human rights education.  He has vast experience in mainstreaming human rights in strategic planning, especially in the field of education.  He has designed and coordinated many projects advocating and reinforcing participatory processes for the benefit of school pupils and university students.

Special Rapporteurs and other "mandate-holders" of the Commission are independent from any government and serve in their individual capacity.  The Special Rapporteur on the right to education is mandated by the Commission to make recommendations on appropriate measures to promote and protect the realization of the right to education based on gathered and received information from relevant sources, and to intensify efforts aimed at identifying ways and means to overcome obstacles and difficulties in the realization of the right to education.  The Special Rapporteur is also mandated to review the interdependence and interrelatedness of the right to education with other human rights, to apply a gender perspective in his work, and to present his proposals and recommendations to the Commission on an annual basis.

The current mandate of the Special Rapporteur expires in 2007.  The previous Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Katarina Tomasevski, who served from the creation of the mandate in 1998 until July 2004, made an important contribution to a better understanding of the normative content of this and related rights.

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