International Human Rights Days

Photo by Feng Shuai/ for China daily

Every year on October 5th the World Teachers’ Day is celebrated and was first celebrated in 1994. While it was first celebrated in 1994 the day on which it falls holds importance, as commemorated the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the status of teachers, which for the first time set “benchmarks regarding the rights and responsibilities of teachers and standards for their initial preparation, education, recruitment, employment and teaching and learning conditions”(UNESCO, 2025). This recommendation was further elaborated in 1997 to include teaching staff of Higher Education. Here, this year’s World Teachers’ Day will center on the theme “Recasting teaching as a collaborative profession”, which is supposed to highlight the transformative potential of collaboration in the field of education.

This Day highlights not only the importance of teachers and reflects the support they need to their talent and vocation, but it also showcases the Sustainable Development Goal 4, which is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”(SDG, 2025). Here, the importance of highlighted in the statistics released by the UN in 2024 which state that the past decade school attendance by children has only increased by 1% and 251 million children and youth are still out of schools globally (UNESCO,2024). But also, other points affect the quality of education are the environment of schools, whether schools are interrupted by conflict as well as which languages schools use to teach, here 40% of children cannot access education in their first language, which has significant consequences. 

The World Teachers’ Day continues to play a significant role as not only are we facing a teaching staff crisis with an urgent need for 44 million primary and secondary teachers needed by 2030, but also with the rise in digitalization, good teachers are needed to counter forces that undermine democracy, teach independent thinking and combat the literacy crisis we are currently facing in developed countries. But also with increasing world crisis and conflict teachers are needed in providing hope and normality for children in these places.