Future Frontiers of Childhood and Adolescence

By the end of 2019, 4.8 million refugees and migrants had left Venezuela – making it the largest external displacement crisis in the region’s recent history. Of these, 1 in 4 was a child. Across Latin America and the Caribbean, since November 2020, 137 million girls and boys are missing out on their education due to the prolonged closure of schools during COVID-19. The implications are troubling, especially for migrant and refugee children, for whom access to inclusive and equitable education remains a major challenge. This study collates evidence from Latin America, the Caribbean and across the world to gain a better understanding of the multifaceted linkages between education and migration. It estimates gaps in educational outcomes; identifies structural barriers to education; and highlights promising practices to inform policy.

The implementation of remote learning in Latin America and the Caribbean during the COVID-19 school closures confirmed that the divide in access to electricity and technology remained a major hurdle for governments across the region to serve all children. School closures risk widening existing learning gaps as private schools were more prepared to use technology for remote learning and children from wealthier households received more support at home while schools were closed. As countries in the region reopen their schools, it is vital that governments incorporate key lessons learned to improve the resilience and equity of the education systems. This report presents evidence on remote learning during the COVID-19 school closures in Latin America and the Caribbean to help guide decision-makers to build more effective, sustainable and resilient education systems for current and future crises.

The prevalence of school-related violence and, in particular, bullying is not a new or isolated phenomenon, nor is it limited to certain schools or countries. Abundant evidence indicates that bullying is widespread and has a negative impact on educational outcomes. Children who are victims of bullying can also be affected emotionally and physically in both the short and long terms. Evidence from low- and middle-income countries on bullying is less extensive when compared to the evidence available on predictors and effects of bullying from high-income countries. However, some findings for the Latin American and Caribbean region seem to suggest a similar picture, with a high prevalence of bullying victimization and association to lower reading scores in different subjects tested. This working paper first uses data from UNESCO’s Third Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study for nationally representative samples of sixth grade students to determine the prevalence of bullying and its association to learning outcomes in 15 countries of the LAC region. It then looks at interventions in countries of the region to mitigate the impacts of violence.

*This blog post has been translated into Spanish: Lo que sabemos y lo que no sabemos sobre las pandillas juveniles en América Latina Gang violence in Latin America has become one of the central security concerns in some countries of the region, including the countries of the Northern Triangle of Central America and more recently, Mexico. Gang members tend to join these identity-shaping groups during early adolescence, which has contributed to the continued stigmatization of this population group. Indeed, adolescence is a period of growth, of change, and of risk-taking (not necessarily always negative) — a fork in the road where choices can determine futures. Assumptions about youth gangs in Latin America are flawed. By discussing what we actually know, touching on involvement of gangs in violent crime, existing work and data gaps, and education, we can move towards addressing existing issues. To what extent can gangs be blamed for violent crime?This is still unclear. Media hype over gangs, referred to as pandillas in Mexico and maras in Central America, has given the impression that gang members are responsible for a large share of violent crime in some countries of the region. In Honduras — largely believed to be the country with the highest rate of gang membership in Central America, although estimates are not accurate  — former security minister Oscar Alvarez blamed the maras for a large share of crime in the country, yet the Honduran police have failed to release statistics to back up this claim. According to available data, less than 5% of all crime in Honduras is committed by people under 18 years of age, and it is this adolescent group that generally comprises a large share of mara membership. In the case of El Salvador, where gangs are considered to be one of the main problems facing the country according to its citizens, no precise figures exist to document the actual number of gang members in the country or their contribution to violent crime. Not all gangs created equalIn fieldwork with adolescents and young men in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, once considered the epicentre of organised crime throughout the 'war on drugs' declared in Mexico in 2006, I found that having spent time with a gang throughout their childhood and adolescence increased the probability of participating in organised criminal activity related to the drug trade; but I also found that participation in serious criminality was conditional on other factors, including the type of gang that was joined, the type of activities the gang was involved in, with participants joining at an older age more at risk of engaging in serious criminality. In other words, associating in a gang was not necessarily nor forcibly conducive to participating in serious criminal activity. No hay nadie que no pase por las esquinasExtreme violence has historically been avoided in Mexican gangs, and it is only until recently that the social dynamics of gangs in Mexico have left behind their traditional logic and some have been associated to high impact and organised criminality, although the extent of their cooperation is not well understood or documented. As a local young man I interviewed made clear, being part of a pandilla, or a gang, is part of the culture amongst impoverished and disenfranchised youth in Ciudad Juarez. As he succinctly told me: 'No hay nadie que no pase por las esquinas'. In other words, no one manages to avoid the street corners - the traditional birth place of the gang.

Even in countries where gender equality is a main driver in policy design, the division of childcare among parents is unequal. We need to ask some important questions: Are we doing enough to promote gender equality? How can social policies be better designed to close the gender gap and empower all women and girls? How can social policies include women’s specific needs? I recently joined a team of experts at UNICEF Innocenti to try to answer these questions by analysing the gender aspects of cash transfer programmes targeted at children and their households. We analysed programmatic documents and reports from governments, ministries and other stakeholders at the national and international level to review the extent to which social protection programmes incorporate gender from a legal and policy perspective. However, this method does not allow us to examine effective coverage, or actual implementation of laws and policies. Nonetheless, assessing legal coverage is critical to understand the overall social protection programme, the extent to which gender is reflected in its design features, and the State’s degree of commitment towards gender equality in general. Using four dimensions, we explored whether the selected social protection programmes are gender-sensitive: Legal and policy frameworks into which the social protection programme is embeddedRisks and structural inequalities addressed in the programme objectivesDesign and delivery mechanisms, including conditionalitiesGovernance, monitoring, and evaluation mechanismsWhile the research is cross-regional and cross-country, in this blog, I will focus on preliminary findings for conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in nine countries in Latin America. CCTs are cash payments given to poor people when they meet certain conditions. This type of social protection is popular in the region and aims to alleviate poverty in the short term while improving children’s health and education in order to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty in the long term. Agustina Vargas de Esteban, smiling, washes dishes in the kitchen sink, at home in District 7, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city of El Alto, near La Paz, the capital of Bolivia.Some preliminary findingsAre programme objectives and targeting gender-sensitive? Most programmes look to address child poverty and often assign mothers as recipients of the cash transfer, with the assumption that they spend relatively more on their children's needs compared to male caregivers. Some programmes, such as in Bolivia, have the explicit objective of targeting people who are not covered by any other social protection programme. Others consider intersecting risks and vulnerabilities, such as disabilities and ethnic monitoring, and target programmes accordingly. Overall, the research suggests that targeting methods are not gender-sensitive. Assigning mothers as the transfer recipient does not make the programmes responsive to women’s specific needs. On the contrary, it reinforces gender expectations for mothers as main carers. Do conditionalities and sanctions add more burden on women? Conditionalities are contentious—many critics are opposed to sanctions for not meeting conditions and feel that conditions imply that poor people do not know what is best for their children. The responsibility of meeting conditionalities often falls on women, creating an extra burden for them, while fathers are usually absent in the design of CCTs (Cookson, 2018; Molyneux, 2006). In this study, most conditionalities are related to healthcare and education, such as mandatory medical check-ups or school attendance. Non-compliance of these conditions lead to sanctions or punitive measures resulting in the termination of the cash transfer immediately (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay) or gradually (Brazil, Ecuador, Peru). Since mothers are the recipients of these benefits in most programmes, conditionalities and sanctions can risk putting more burden on women who must meet conditions regardless of the availability of health and education services. Patterns in gender-sensitive social protection programming in nine countries in Latin America.Are design and delivery features based on gender risks, inequalities, and dynamics? Three programmes (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay) recognise that women face a greater risk of poverty and have generally less access to resources, such as land or capital. In light of this, these programmes assign women as transfer recipients. Only Argentina’s programme acknowledges that unpaid care and domestic work are primarily carried out by women, highlighting that school attendance and improved children’s health broaden the possibilities for mothers to look for work or perform better in their jobs. Only two countries (Argentina, Bolivia) include coverage for informal workers, including domestic workers, unemployed people, single taxpayers, or those without health insurance. This is critical considering the high level of informality in the labour market in these countries: 77,7% in Bolivia and 48,1% in Argentina (ILOSTAT, 2019). While there is no significant difference between female and male informal employment in Argentina, in Bolivia informal employment is 80,2% for women and 75,5% for men (World Bank, 2019). Is gender integrated into governance, monitoring, and evaluation? Monitoring and evaluation mechanisms help ensure effective programming, including adequate coverage and giving a voice to recipients. In our study, most programmes include some form of grievance or feedback mechanism that informs policy assessment and reform. In Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Uruguay, the monitoring and evaluation frameworks use sex and age-disaggregated data. However, there is a lack of gender-specific indicators, such as gender norms and women’s empowerment, in most of the cash transfer programmes. Governance systems that integrate women’s participation help ensure that women raise concerns and are part of the programme management. In Paraguay, women are elected as leaders (lideresas) by other recipients, to create groups within the community and act as a spokesperson between the users and the programme implementers. In Peru, the lead mothers (madres líderes) help train recipient mothers in health and education issues, encourage them to meet the programme conditions, and act as a point of contact between the recipients and the local managers. For the rest of the countries, no data was found on governance mechanisms. What’s next? This research is an important step towards understanding how women and girls’ needs are considered in the design of Latin American CCTs. Although legal coverage provides us with an overall picture of these programmes, future research is needed to determine how social protection affects women and girls in practice, including reinforcing traditional gender roles or increasing empowerment.  Furthermore, research on men or diverse household structures, such as same-sex couples or LGBTQ+ households in general, could help close the evidence gap and lead us towards more gender equal social protection.   Constanza Ginestra joined the UNICEF Innocenti as an intern in May 2019 to work with our team on a gender analysis of social protection programmes targeted to children in low- and middle-income countries, focusing on Latin America. Here, Constanza summarises some preliminary results of the research. For further information on UNICEF Innocenti’s GRASSP project, see here.