Mr  President,

The European Union would like to welcome the Special Rapporteur Mr Singh and the Special Rapporteur Mr Kiai and commend them for their valuable work.

Mr. Singh,

We thank you for your report titled on issues and challenges to the right to education in the digital age, with a focus on higher education. We note your strong concern about online or Internet education, and in particular about massive open online courses. These courses can indeed offer significant opportunities but also raise some questions.

Mr. Special Rapporteur:

May we ask you to elaborate on your concerns about massive open online courses, in particular regarding the quality of the education being provided and the certification of education providers?

Could you please elaborate on how you see Governments harnessing of information and communications technologies to promote quality and effective learning in the context of the 2030 Agenda?

As this is your last appearance before this council as Special Rapporteur, we thank you for the contribution to human rights and wish you the best in your future endeavours.

Mr Kiai

We warmly thank you for your Report that addresses the role of fundamentalism in contributing to the violation of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association.

We share your view that fundamentalism can contribute to the violation of these rights. At the same time, the protection of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association is critical in preventing and combatting fundamentalism and extremism.

In your conclusions you recommend to States to establish or strengthen oversight mechanisms to identify and deal with practices of fundamentalism restricting assembly and association rights by States.

Could you please share with us concrete examples of best practices of this oversight mechanism?

Finally, we wish you all the best in your further work.

I thank you Mr President.