In a press release published on Monday, two Liberian civil society organisations, the Coalition for Transparency and Accountability in Education (COTAE) and the National Teachers Association of Liberia (NTAL), raised concerns about reports of serious labour abuses at Bridge International Academies (BIA) in Liberia. BIA is an American for-profit company that runs hundreds of low-cost schools in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, India, and Liberia. It has been operating in Liberia for four years as part of a controversial partnership with the Government.

The statement expresses concerns at information according to which staff salaries in the company would have been reduced by 80-90 percent, while employees would have still been required to work from home. The Ministry of Labor announced on 25 May opening an inquiry about these concerns.

This week, a news article was also published alleging that BIA's country director in Liberia had been involved in sexual harrassment.

GI-ESCR has been monitoring the activities of commercial schools, including BIA, and their impact on the riht to education, exposing with partners similar concerns raised in Kenya and Uganda. Two complaints from Kenyan parents and BIA staff and former staff against the IFC, the World Bank's private arm, that invested in BIA, are currently ongoing.

States must ensure the development of quality public education, and that the operations of private actors, where they exist, be in accordancce with the right to education. The recently-adopted Abidjan Principles on the right to education provide guidance as to the standards that need to be followed, including in particular labour standards in private schools (Guiding Principles 55 and 56), and the limitations to funding private scools, including the prohibition to fund any school that "is commercial and excessively pursues its own self-interest" (Guiding Principle 73).

The full press statement from COTAE and NTAL can be found here