Publications

This paper presents an overview of government commitments to strengthen participation by children and adolescents to protect them from sexual abuse and exploitation. It also considers concrete recommendations for strengthening young people’s involvement in their own protection, based on their recommendations about what is needed to realize the Stockholm Declaration and Agenda for Action. Other useful inputs include case studies that offer new perspectives on children’s and adolescents’ participation to combat sexual exploitation and abuse. The paper provides recommendations for further research, policy development and programming intended to support advocacy and practice developments with and by children and adolescents. The paper calls for governments, UN agencies and NGOs to promote children’s civil rights and recognize their agency and the diversity of childhood experiences. It highlights the importance of strengthening child protection systems, developing and strengthening child-led groups and networks, and creating processes and mechanisms for children to access information, express their views, participate in practice and policy matters concerning them and gain feedback.

Depuis 2006, le Mali subit de plein fouet les effets de la crise alimentaire mondiale avec des augmentations de prix allant jusqu'à 67%. Cette étude propose des simulations des impacts de cette crise et de diverses politiques de réponse sur le bien-être des enfants. Les impacts analysés se situent au niveau de la pauvreté monétaire (alimentaire), la nutrition, l'éducation, le travail et l'accès aux services de santé des enfants. Selon les simulations, chez les enfants la pauvreté alimentaire aura augmenté de 41 à 51% et le taux d'insuffisance calorique de 32 à 40%, alors que les impacts sur leur participation scolaire, leur travail et leur accès aux services de santé auront été assez faibles. Pour préparer une réponse adéquate, le gouvernement doit tout d'abord identifier les individus pauvres à protéger sur la base d'un nombre restreint de caractéristiques sociodémographiques facilement observables. Dans cette étude, une méthode de ciblage est proposée. Toutefois, les simulations du modèle de ciblage montrent qu’environ un quart des enfants pauvres sont exclus par erreur (souscouverture), alors que plus du tiers des enfants non-pauvres sont inclus par erreur (fuites). Ces erreurs de ciblage, qui augmentent proportionnellement lorsqu'on vise les pauvres extrêmes, réduisent l'impact et augmentent les coûts de toute intervention politique. Cela dit, il est à noter que les fuites peuvent quand même agir au niveau de l'insuffisance calorique, de la participation scolaire, du travail des enfants et de l'accès aux services de santé où les besoins ne se trouvent pas exclusivement du côté des enfants pauvres. Le ciblage des enfants ou même des sous-groupes, par âge, d'enfants se bute au problème de la diffusion probable des bénéfices aux autres membres du ménage. De plus, pour des décisions concernant le travail, l'éducation et l'accès aux services de santé, c'est le revenu total du ménage qui est déterminant. La politique de cantines scolaires se révèle particulièrement efficace du fait qu'elle concentre tous les fonds publics consentis exclusivement sur la consommation alimentaire hautement nutritive, alors que des transferts en espèces aux ménages peuvent servir à diverses fins. De plus, il est probable qu'elle ait des impacts souhaitables sur la scolarisation et le travail des enfants. Toutefois, certaines mises en garde s'imposent sur l'exclusion des enfants qui ne participent pas à l'école, la difficulté de cibler uniquement les enfants pauvres et la possibilité que l'enfant se voit réduire proportionnellement ses rations alimentaires à l’intérieur du ménage.

Special Series on Social Norms and Harmful Practices

The essay refines the application of the social convention theory to the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). The theory compares footbinding in China to FGM/C in Africa, explains each practice in terms of simple game theory, and recommends that the methods used to end footbinding be adapted to end FGM/C. It hypothesizes that each practice originated in highly stratified ancient empires, and became an ongoing requirement of marriageability, general and persistent within the intramarrying community because no one family can give it up on its own.

This paper focuses on independent migrant children, defined as below 18 years old, who choose to move from home and live at destinations without a parent or adult guardian. It summarises quantitative and qualitative research, and uses this to reflect on research agendas and global debates towards linking migration and development. The paper surveys historical evidence on linkages between children’s migration and societal development in earlier periods of modernisation, and identifies parallels to contemporary developing countries. The contemporary situation in developing countries is described in terms of: (1) numerical scale; (2) individual and family characteristics of the children involved; (3) decision-makers and decision-making processes in children’s movements; (4) why it happens, including from children’s viewpoints; (5) modes of movements; and (6) situations of children at destinations. The paper considers the extent to which children may demand migration opportunities, and how this demand may be met partly with forms of movement specific to children. Research strategies are discussed to provide a bridge to development issues, including conceptualization of children’s independent movements, children’s labour migration, migration statistics and selection of who migrates. A final section draws on the review to reflect on global debates in child development and societal development.

This paper identifies and evaluates qualitative methods appropriate for use in conducting policy-relevant research on the experiences, motivations, agency and life histories of autonomous and semi-autonomous children and adolescents, including those who migrate independently of parents and adult guardians. First, the paper presents an overview of qualitative research practice and its potential to extend and deepen knowledge of children’s varied and independently negotiated life circumstances. It is argued that qualitative approaches are necessary to understand and meaningfully respond to the experiences of diverse physical, social and cultural environments. The second, longer section of the paper presents illustrative examples of qualitative research techniques. An illustrated inventory of research tools is presented with seven categories: surveys; interviews and focus groups; observation and participant observation; life histories and biographical methods; visual and textual methods; performance, play and arts-based methods; and virtual and computer-aided methods. The concluding section synthesizes the information presented and provides guidance on how to incorporate qualitative methods, and qualitative methodologies, into research on children who live independently of parents and adult guardians or who exercise autonomy in more limited contexts.

This paper examines the role of child agency as it relates to child protection. The focus arises from recognition that child protection approaches can be ineffective, and even counterproductive, when local context is not given sufficient attention (Bissell et al., 2007). The prevailing child protection models - child rescue, social services and medical models - commonly neglect local community assets, including the role of children themselves. Yet in many cases these assets may play a critical role, particularly when family and community are the primary line of defence to protect children from violence and exploitation. Rethinking child protection from a rights perspective requires building on empirical and theoretical understandings of child agency and child development, and the interactions between them.

This paper adds a perspective to existing research on child protection by engaging in a debate on intersectional discrimination and its relationship to child protection. The paper has a two-fold objective: (1) to further establish intersectionality as a concept to address discrimination against children; and (2) to illustrate the importance of addressing intersectionality within rights-based programmes of child protection.

Since 2006, Mali has experienced the full effects of the global food crisis, with price increases of up to 67%. This study presents simulations of the impacts of this crisis and a number of policy responses with respect to the welfare of children. The impacts are analyzed in terms of monetary (food) poverty, nutrition, education, child labour and access to health services of children. According to simulations, food poverty among children would have increased from 41% to 51%, with a corresponding rise in caloric insufficiency from 32% to 40%, while the impacts on school participation, work and access to health services would have been relatively weak. To prepare an adequate response, the government should start by identifying the poor individuals who are to be protected, based on a limited number of easily observed sociodemographic characteristics. A method of targeting these individuals is proposed in this study. However, simulations show that with targeting about one quarter of poor children would be erroneously excluded (under-coverage), while more than a third of non-poor children would be erroneously included (leakage). These identification errors, which increase in proportion with the extremity of poverty, reduce the impact and increase the cost of any public interventions. That having been said, it is important to note that leakage to the non-poor can nonetheless improve the conditions of children in terms of caloric intake, school participation, child labour and access to health services, none of which are exclusive to poor children. When targeting children or sub-groups of children by age, benefits will likely be deflected to some extent to other family members. Moreover, it is total household income, regardless of the member targeted, that determines decisions relating to child work, education or access to health services. School feeding programmes are found to be a particularly efficient policy in that they concentrate public funds exclusively on the consumption of highly nutritious foods, while cash transfers can be used by households for other purposes. Moreover, school feeding programmes are likely to have desirable effects on school participation and child labour. However, there are some caveats due to the fact that these programmes exclude children who do not attend school, the difficulty of exclusively targeting poor children and the possibility that child food rations at home will be proportionally reduced.

This paper highlights a number of frameworks for positive indicator development which examine the positive well-being of children. Based upon this review, it suggests a new comprehensive framework which identifies constructs for positive well-being as well as potential indicators and extant measures that fit with those constructs. In addition, the paper reviews existing data sources for examples of positive measures that are found in the proposed framework as well as research studies that have been successful in measuring these indicators. The paper then notes the data and measurement gaps that exist in comprehensively measuring the positive in children and youth. Finally, it identifies a number of conceptual and methodological issues that need consideration as efforts to define and measure positive indicators of well-being and well-becoming go forward.

After two decades of transition the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States face an increasingly diverse mix of old and new policy challenges to improving child well-being and realizing children’s rights. While attempts have been made to reflect these challenges and diversities by constructing indices of child well-being which measure and rank overall performance by individual countries, this paper proposes a simplified approach which examines five different dimensions of child well-being separately, using several indicators for each dimension that allow cross-country comparison. The dimensions included in the analysis are income, health, education, housing and deprivation of parental up-bringing. The results highlight a divergence of child well-being priorities in the selected dimensions for the different countries and for different age groups of children. The analysis shows that in the 2000-2008 period the situation of children improved in absolute terms in almost all dimensions in all countries, but that government interventions still face difficulties in reaching all children, and that across the region there are increasing differences in the character of problems facing the more vulnerable sections of the child population. The discussion shows that it is difficult to rank countries according to an overall level of child well-being, since performance varies significantly according to the choice of dimension or indicator considered. An overall index cannot therefore capture the open challenges, and indeed may distract policy attention away from them.

This review considers the evidence from child labour research that is relevant to understanding independent child migration for work. Three factors are relevant: first, migration for work is one of the many possible alternatives for child time allocation. The methodological and analytical tools used in the study of child labour are thus applicable to this study. Second,independent child migration for work will be reduced by factors that improve alternatives to migration. Child labour at home is one possible alternative to migrating. Thus, influences on child labour will affect independent child migration by altering the pressures that push children into migration. Third, the issues that arise in understanding why employers use children are also relevant to understanding what factors pull children into migration. In existing data resources, two methods are used to identify independent child migrants: the roster method and the fertility survey method. The roster approach identifies migrants by enumerating residents in sampled households. As such, it measures migrants in destination areas and misses children that are difficult to locate, especially those who migrate out of country. In the fertility survey method mothers account for the status of all of their children. This is useful for identifying origin areas for the migrants but is uninformative about the current condition of the child migrant. Stronger data collection efforts are necessary to better measure the extent of working independent child migrants and understand both the source and the living conditions of independent child migrants.

Las investigaciones recogidas en cientos de estudios demuestran los beneficios que proporcionan la educación y los cuidados de calidad durante la primera infancia para el aprendizaje posterior del niño, su éxito escolar y su desarrollo social. Habiendo reconocido el valor de ofrecer oportunidades educativas al niño desde los primeros momentos de su vida, muchos países han extendido la educación y los cuidados a la primera infancia durante los últimos años. México consituye un caso interesante, en el que durante los últimos cinco años se han extendido la educación y los cuidados a la primera infancia, así como las iniciativas encaminadas a mejorar la calidad y a reformar el currículo nacional de los preescolares. Este documento examina tres iniciativas de política educativa que se llevaron a cabo en México entre 2000 y 2006: la expansión de la educación preescolar, la mejora de la calidad y la reforma curricular.