The UN will soon launch the 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report (GEMR) and once again there is a glaring omission in its approach to SDG4 – the global education goal.
Despite ‘access and equity’ being named as the core theme for the 2026 GEMR, UNESCO’s recently published concept note remains silent on the structural conditions of racism, casteism, and religious, ethnic, and linguistic discrimination. While the SDGs offered an integrated framework for understanding development, bringing together the global north and south, it has failed to acknowledge that the varied forms of racial discrimination that occur across the world are also a global problem. Global policy approaches to SDG4, such as the Global Education Monitoring Reports, rarely name systems that sustain educational injustices as systems of oppression.