Education is usually discussed as a public service, a pathway to employment or an investment in economic development. It is also one of the most important forms of human rights infrastructure available to society.
Education gives people the knowledge to understand their rights, the confidence to exercise them and the practical capability to participate in decisions that affect their lives. It helps workers recognize unsafe or exploitative conditions. It equips managers to identify risks hidden within operations and supply chains. It gives communities a stronger voice when economic activity affects their livelihoods, environment or dignity.
For businesses, this makes education far more than a philanthropic concern.
It is part of the foundation on which responsible business conduct depends.
Education is both a human right and an enabling right
The right to education is recognized in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and reinforced through international conventions and the Education 2030 Agenda.
Sustainable Development Goal 4 calls for inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all. Target 4.7 goes further by explicitly requiring learners to acquire knowledge and skills related to human rights, gender equality, sustainable development, peace and global citizenship.[1]
This distinction matters.
Education is a right in itself. It is also an enabling right: a right that makes the meaningful exercise of many other rights possible.
A person who can read a contract is better equipped to identify abusive employment conditions. A worker who understands occupational safety can recognize preventable hazards. A community with access to reliable information can participate more effectively in decisions about land, infrastructure and natural resources. A manager trained in human rights can assess business impacts with greater competence and less reliance on assumptions.
Human rights become stronger when people possess the knowledge and agency required to apply them.
The global education gap is also a business and human rights gap
The world remains far from achieving universal access to quality education.
UNESCO’s 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report estimates that 273 million children, adolescents and young people were out of school in 2024. That represents approximately one in six people of school age worldwide.[2]
This exclusion does not remain within the walls of the education system.
It enters labour markets.
It appears in informal work, dangerous employment, low wages, weak bargaining power, limited access to remedy and intergenerational poverty. It also increases vulnerability within supply chains, especially where families face pressure to replace education with income.
The latest estimates from the International Labour Organization and UNICEF indicate that nearly 138 million children were engaged in child labour in 2024. Approximately 54 million were performing hazardous work capable of damaging their health, safety or development.[3]
Child labour and educational exclusion reinforce each other.
Children who work long hours struggle to attend school, concentrate and progress academically. Children who leave education early face narrower employment prospects and a greater likelihood of remaining in precarious or informal work. The result is a cycle in which poverty drives children out of education, and educational exclusion reproduces poverty.
For companies operating through complex supply chains, this is a direct human rights issue.
A credible child-labour strategy therefore requires more than supplier declarations and contractual prohibitions. It requires attention to root causes: household income, adult wages, social protection, school availability, educational quality and the real cost of attendance.
Quality education is one of the strongest preventive measures available.
Four ways education strengthens business and human rights
1. Education reduces vulnerability to exploitation
Education expands employment choices and strengthens the ability of individuals to move away from dangerous, coercive or underpaid work.
World Bank research estimates that every additional year of schooling is associated, on average, with approximately a 9% increase in hourly earnings globally.[4]
Earnings are only part of the impact.
Education also supports access to formal employment, financial independence, social mobility and greater participation in economic life. These effects can reduce the structural vulnerability that allows exploitation to persist.
For business, investment in education and skills can therefore strengthen both human development and the long-term resilience of labour markets.
2. Education helps workers recognize and exercise their rights
A human rights policy has limited value when workers do not know that it exists, cannot understand it or fear using the mechanisms it creates.
Workers need accessible education on issues such as:
- freedom from discrimination and harassment;
- occupational safety and health;
- working hours, wages and employment conditions;
- freedom of association;
- data protection and workplace surveillance;
- grievance and remedy procedures;
- the responsible use of artificial intelligence.
This learning must be understandable across languages, literacy levels, employment categories and locations.
A policy written at headquarters does not automatically become capability across a global workforce. Communication, training, repetition and practical application are what turn principles into workplace behavior.
3. Education makes human rights due diligence operational
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights establish that companies should identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how they address adverse human rights impacts. They also recognize the need to communicate policies internally and support them with appropriate training.[5]
This demands professional competence.
Procurement teams need to understand supply-chain risks. Human-resources teams need to recognize discrimination and retaliation. Technology teams need to assess privacy, bias and algorithmic impacts. Senior leaders need to understand how commercial decisions can create pressure that later appears as a human rights violation elsewhere in the value chain.
The capability gap remains substantial.
The World Benchmarking Alliance reports that only one in ten companies assessed where human rights risks originated from, or related to, their underlying business model and strategy. Its latest benchmark also found an average human-rights-due-diligence score of 43.9 out of 100 across the assessed cohort.[6]
This suggests that many organizations have moved further in making commitments than in building the knowledge systems required to implement them consistently.
Human rights due diligence cannot become a routine management practice until the people responsible for commercial, operational and technical decisions understand how to perform it.
4. Education strengthens voice, participation and access to remedy
Effective remedy depends on people knowing that a grievance mechanism exists, understanding how to use it and trusting that they will not face retaliation.
Education supports each of these conditions.
It helps employees and affected communities identify harmful impacts. It enables them to document concerns more clearly. It gives them the language and confidence required to engage with institutions. It also helps companies train those receiving complaints to respond consistently, sensitively and fairly.
This is especially important for migrant workers, contract workers, young workers, people with disabilities and communities operating in languages different from those used by corporate headquarters.
Language access is a human rights issue.
A mechanism that exists only in one language, assumes advanced literacy or requires complex digital navigation may be formally available while remaining practically inaccessible.
From human rights awareness to human rights capability
Many organizations approach human rights education as an annual compliance exercise.
Employees watch a presentation, complete a short assessment and confirm that they have read the policy.
This may demonstrate that information was distributed. It does not demonstrate that capability was built.
Human rights capability means that people can apply principles under real operational pressure.
Can a procurement manager recognize when an unrealistic delivery deadline may encourage excessive working hours?
Can a software team identify when an automated decision may discriminate against a protected group?
Can a supervisor respond correctly when a worker raises a safety concern?
Can an executive understand when a business model transfers unacceptable risks to workers, suppliers or communities?
These questions reveal the difference between awareness and competence.
Responsible businesses need learning systems that are continuous, role-specific, multilingual and connected to actual decisions. Human rights education should reach boards, executives, employees, contractors, suppliers and affected stakeholders in forms appropriate to their responsibilities and circumstances.
ICARUS: expanding access to human rights capability
At ICARUS, we believe technology should help make high-quality learning more accessible, searchable and relevant to the people who need it.
UNESCO’s SDG 4 Knowledge Hub has published the ICARUS practice under the title “AI-enabled multilingual learning infrastructure for inclusive lifelong learning.” The case study describes an approach that uses artificial intelligence for video indexing, transcription and translation; creates searchable knowledge repositories; supports adaptive content discovery; and structures competence-oriented learning pathways.[7]
These capabilities have direct relevance to business and human rights.
Human rights learning frequently exists in long reports, legal texts, policy documents, webinars and training videos. The information may be technically available while remaining difficult to find, understand or apply.
AI-enabled indexing can help a learner locate the exact part of a video addressing child labour, grievance mechanisms or responsible AI.
Multilingual transcription and translation can extend learning beyond the dominant language of the organization.
Searchable knowledge repositories can connect policies, cases, standards and training material.
Competence-oriented pathways can help organizations move from one-time awareness sessions toward structured capability development.
The purpose is not to automate human rights judgment.
It is to give more people the knowledge required to exercise that judgment responsibly.
What responsible companies should do
Businesses can strengthen the relationship between education and human rights through five practical commitments.
Treat education as part of human rights due diligence. Identify where limited knowledge, language barriers or lack of training increase the likelihood of harm.
Protect access to education throughout the value chain. Examine child-labour risks, working hours, living wages, family pressures and the availability of quality schooling.
Build role-specific human rights competence. Train employees according to the decisions they actually make and the impacts connected to their responsibilities.
Make learning multilingual and accessible. Adapt content for different languages, literacy levels, disabilities, digital conditions and cultural contexts.
Measure capability, not attendance. Evaluate whether people can recognize risks, make sound decisions and use grievance mechanisms effectively.
These actions align commercial resilience with the corporate responsibility to respect internationally recognized human rights. The UN Global Compact’s first principle calls on businesses to support and respect those rights, while the UN Guiding Principles establish due diligence as the process through which that responsibility becomes operational.[8]
Education is where prevention begins
Business and human rights discussions often focus on the point at which harm has already occurred: an unsafe factory, an excluded community, a discriminatory system or a child found within a supply chain.
Remedy remains essential.
Education allows us to move earlier.
It equips people to recognize risk before it becomes abuse. It strengthens institutions before they face crisis. It gives workers and communities greater agency. It helps companies replace abstract commitments with informed decisions.
This is why SDG 4 belongs at the heart of the business and human rights agenda.
Education builds the knowledge through which rights are understood.
It builds the capability through which responsibilities are fulfilled.
And it builds the human agency through which responsible economies become possible.
At ICARUS, we believe the next stage of responsible business will be defined by this transition: from human rights policies to human rights capability.
Education is where that transition begins.
Statistics used in the article
[1] SDG 4.7: The target explicitly includes education on human rights, gender equality, sustainable development, peace and global citizenship.
[2] 273 million excluded from education: UNESCO’s 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report estimates that 273 million children and young people were out of school in 2024—around one in six globally.
[3] 138 million children in child labour: The ILO and UNICEF estimate that 138 million children were in child labour in 2024, including 54 million in hazardous work.
[4] 9% return per additional year of schooling: World Bank evidence finds an average global increase of approximately 9% in hourly earnings for every extra year of education.
[5] Training under the UN Guiding Principles: OHCHR’s Guiding Principles state that internal human rights policies should be supported by necessary personnel training, while due diligence should identify, prevent, mitigate and account for adverse impacts.
[6] Corporate implementation gap: The World Benchmarking Alliance reports that only one in ten assessed companies examines how human rights impacts relate to its business model; its 2026 benchmark cohort recorded an average human-rights-due-diligence score of 43.9/100.
[7] UNESCO’s ICARUS case study: UNESCO describes ICARUS as an AI-enabled multilingual learning practice supporting searchable knowledge, video indexing, transcription, translation, adaptive discovery and competence-oriented pathways.
[8] Corporate responsibility: UN Global Compact Principle 1 calls on businesses to support and respect internationally proclaimed human rights, while the UNGPs apply the corporate responsibility to respect human rights across enterprises.