International legal mechanisms for the protection of the right to education in Ukraine under wartime digital transformation

Abstract

In 2020–2025, protection of the right to education in Ukraine unfolded under conditions of accelerated digitalisation, wartime disruption and binding international obligations, raising acute questions of equal access and enforceability. The study aimed to identify structural and procedural gaps in implementing educational rights under international standards. Methods combined a regulatory analysis of core UN, Council of Europe, EU and UNESCO instruments with a case-law analysis of five reasoned decisions (2020–2025), using a simplified double-coding scheme to classify affected right-to-education dimensions (availability, accessibility, acceptability, adaptability, digital) and gap levels (normative, institutional, justiciability), followed by cross-case aggregation and comparison with Ukrainian framework statutes. Results indicate institutional gaps in 60% of coded decisions and justiciability failures in 40%, with no pure normative voids; digital-access constraints appear in 80% and unfulfilled positive obligations in 60%, pointing to deficits in procedures, capacity and time-bound duties rather than insufficiency of formal norms. Conclusions highlight the need to translate existing standards into enforceable practice through targeted statutory amendments (including standardised notification of protection pathways and a dedicated “Digital Equality” section) and a KPI-based oversight regime (legal-literacy coverage, response-time SLAs, periodic monitoring and a national compliance index with open-data publication).