Is literacy a basic human right?

The Universal declaration of Human Rights was a milestone in judicial and Human history, embodying a set of guarantees for a person to be able not only to live but to live with dignity in order to develop fully and use one's Human qualities, intelligence, talents and conscience to satisfy one's spiritual, physical, social and other needs. In other words, one's Right to be Human. Literacy is crucial to the acquisition of essential life skills …

…liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development.... But we are coming to realize... that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first. <Tab/><Tab/><Tab/>John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - ), The Affluent Society (1958)