A/76/162 ‘multiplying’ effect of the right to education is of particular relevance to break or perpetuate the cycle of exclusion and marginalization”. 41 62. It is also here that an intersectional approach assists in better understanding the increased marginalization and vulnerability of minority women and girls, who often face even more obstacles to their right to education. 42 63. To enumerate just a few of the reasons, beyond the obstacle of non -citizenship or statelessness, as mentioned earlier, minorities may attend schools where instruction is not in a language they are familiar with, leading to poorer academic results and higher dropout rates, as well as family members being less able to contribute to and be engaged in their child’s educational environment; 43 curricula may also exclude information about their culture and language, or even implicitly or more explicitly denigrate their identity; and there may be financial or physical restrictions to education owing to a lack of accessibility, including minority children having to travel significant distances. The end results, as UNESCO has often stated, are for certain minorities being significantly and disproportionally left behind. 64. Despite this long-standing recognition, the specific exclusion of minorities in all of the measures and indicators of Sustainable Development Goal 4, while only a few social groups are put forward, has led to UNESCO going backwards and largely setting aside its own recognition of minorities as facing “the worst discrimination in education”. In its 2019 report Beyond Commitments: How Countries Implement SDG 4, which is supposed to serve as an important reference for those working towards the achievement of Goal 4, UNESCO focuses instead only on the small number of left behind groups identified as being worthy of consideration under the Goal 4 measures and indicators, on gender, disability and, for one indicator only, indigenous status. While the measures and indicators of the Goals have legitimately drawn attention to the need to tackle the significant obstacles to education that women and girls, persons with disabilities and indigenous children face, this does not in any way diminish the need to protect equally the human right to education of all those who are particularly vulnerable and marginalized. Instead, one particular gr oup is again left behind and excluded, even though minorities face “the worst discrimination in education”. 65. The result is little short of disturbing. Gone is the long-standing UNESCO attention to the exclusion and “discrimination in education” of minor ities: there is no mention of Dalit children, despite their often being denied access to quality education in parts of South Asia; Roma children are also invisible, except for one mention of a European Court of Human Rights decision as a mere example of th e role of regional entities. To neglect the vulnerability and exclusion of Roma women, for example, by dismissing the need to refer to ethnicity, seems difficult to accept, when one considers that Roma women have been described as “probably discriminated a gainst more than any other group, facing discrimination both for their ethnic origin and their gender”. 44 Finally, people of African descent are completely omitted, despite a significant body of research also concluding that they are among those most likel y to face obstacles to accessing schools or quality education and despite even the United Nations High __________________ 41 42 43 44 16/22 Vanessa Sedletzki, “Fulfilling the right to education for minority and indigenous children: where are we in international legal standards?”, State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous Peoples 2009 (London, Minority Rights Group International, 2009), p. 43. Carol Benson, Mother Tongue-based Teaching and Education for Girls: advocacy brief (Bangkok, UNESCO, 2005). See, in particular, Special Rapporteur on minority issues, Language Rights of Linguistic Minorities: A practical guide for implementation, (Geneva, OHCHR, 2018). Roxana Andrei, George Martinidis and Tana Tkadlecova, “Challenges faced by Roma women in Europe on education, employment, health and housing – focus on Czech Republic, Romania and Greece”, in Balkan Social Science Review, vol. 4 (December 2014). 21-09902