Special issue
Children, Youth and Development
DevISSues DevelopmentISSues
Volume6/Number1/May 2004
2
CONTENTS
From the Editorial Board
Special issue: Children, Youth and Development Welcome to this special Development ISSues on the theme of Children and Youth in Development. In recent years, growing awareness that large numbers of children and young people are affected by poverty, hunger, violence, abuse, exploitation, and inadequate health care and education has led to increased concern for their protection and promotion of their rights and welfare. At the same time, there has been a shift in thinking, which increasingly views children not as passive victims but as more active participants and contributors to their own development. In international policy the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has played an important role in promoting child-centred and rights-based approaches to issues of child work, education, health etc. ISS responded to this shift in thinking at an early stage, setting up an option in Children and Development (C&D) in the MA Programme in 2001. The initiative was very much student-driven. In an interview on page 9 ISS alumnus Ben Philips describes how the idea of a C&D course became a reality. Within a few years, C&D had changed its name to Children, Youth and Development (CYD), to reflect its broader concern with young people as a whole, and has now become a fully-fledged component of the courses at the Institute. On page 15, there is a summary of the courses now on offer at ISS in the field of CYD.
This special issue opens by focusing on the international Centre for Child and Youth Studies. iCCYS was set up last year by ISS and International Child Development Initiatives in Leiden. After a short introduction to the centre by its co-directors, there are interviews with the two keynote speakers at the iCCYS launch in November, Katarina Tomasevski and Steve Mokwena. Children are often seen as a ‘soft issue’ in international policy-making circles: commitments are easily made and just as easily ignored. The contributors to this DevISSues share the view that the problems facing children and young people are serious and must be treated as such. They explore several of those issues in detail: children’s rights, participation, children and conflict, HIV/AIDS, education. In addition there are reports of seminars and conferences on CYD and many regular DevISSues features, including Alumni News, Teaching News, ISS Agenda and ISS Staff News. We received many responses to the last DevISSues, especially the article on Africa by Roel van der Veen and on Cuba by Liduine Zumpolle of Pax Christi. You can find excerpts from these responses on page 23. The full texts are available on the website, and you are invited to respond to them using the new moderated electronic discussion platform. The extended online service also allows you to download the main articles and interviews in this issue. Since some of them were edited due to lack of space, the online versions may be longer. For more information on the new service, see page 15. We hope you enjoy this special theme number of DevISSues and look forward to receiving your reactions.
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5 / Children as the subjects of rights interview: Katarina Tomasevski
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6 / Sharing power interview: Steve Mokwena
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7 / Biblionef: Fighting illiteracy among children Aagje van Heekeren
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9 / Time for a new approach interview: Ben Phillips
Page 10 / Armed with resilience Jessica Lenz Page 12 / Psychosocial intervention with children affected by war Sarala Emmanuel
The DevISSues Editorial Board
The views expressed in DevISSues are those of the original authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute.
Page 13 / Children of the forgotten war Brechtje Paardekooper Page 16 / Changing Indonesian childhoods
The Institute of Social Studies
Ben White
ISS is an institute for advanced international education and research offering Diploma, Masters and PhD programmes. The Institute generates, accumulates and transfers knowledge and know-how on human aspects of economic and social change, with a focus on development and transition.
Page 19 / Children affected by armed conflict Edward Sembidde Mwebaze
ISS is a leading centre in this field.
Development ISSues is also available on the ISS website at www.iss.nl
Page 20 / Bernard van Leer Foundation Peter Laugham
4 / iCCYS
iCCYS / 5
international Centre for Child and Youth Studies
Opening iCCYS iCCYS was officially launched on 13 November 2003. Before the opening, keynote speakers Prof. Katarina Tomasevski and Steve Mokwena talked to Ginger da Silva of Radio Netherlands. Below and on the next page are edited versions of their interviews.
In 2003, together with International Child Development Initiatives in Leiden, ISS set up the international Centre for
Katarina Tomasevski is Professor Child and Youth Studies. iCCYS is a speof International Law and International cialised unit for training, research and Relations at Lund University and policy analysis, with a focus on the Special Rapporteur on the Right to needs of children and youth in develoEducation of the UN High Commission ping, transitional and developed socieon Human Rights. ties. The centre’s co-directors Ben White
‘We must see children as the
of ISS and Nico van Oudenhoven of ICDI explain why iCCYS was set up and
Left: Prof. Ben White Right: Dr. Nico van Oudenhoven
what it hopes to achieve.
‘We all have a great deal to learn from each other’ Q: ICDI is a networking and research institute focusing on children at risk. Why create a new institution?
NvO: There is very little attention to children and youth in human rights situations at global level. There is a lot of talk, but very little is being done. We hope that the new centre will give new impetus to that kind of work.
institute, the group whose work focuses on children and development is small. There is a lot of expertise in the field in the Netherands, but it is scattered. So it is important to combine our efforts. We see iCCYS not so much as a new institute as a specialised unit in which two existing institutes work together. Q: How big do you think iCCYS will get?
Q: How involved will ICDI be in iCCYS?
NvO: The centre is a joint venture between ICDI and ISS. And although it is somewhat like a relationship between a mouse and an elephant, we aim to jump very high and we hope ISS will stoop a little. The partnership aims to give a very strong injection in terms of research, and open up new networks in policy and practice. Q: How will ISS be involved in iCCYS?
BW: The image of the mouse and the elephant is not entirely accurate. Although ISS is a large and well-known
BW: I have no idea. But I don't think we should try to grow too fast. We have a professional staff of around 10, which is enough to begin with. At ISS we have recruited a new staff member who is an education specialist. If all goes well, there may be one or two more. But it is more important to enter into collaborative alliances with other institutes involved in the same work, to become an integral part of a network. It is wonderful that people come to ISS to receive professional training, but it is even better if we can help institutions in developing countries to develop their
own capacity to train people there. We can then exchange staff and develop teaching materials jointly. Then everybody benefits. Q: Would you say that in other parts of the world they are developing new approaches to children and youth which we could benefit from here in Europe?
BW: All over the world there is a move away from the traditional view of children as passive victims. This is being worked out in different degrees and different ways in different places. We all have a great deal to learn from each other. That is why iCCYS sees itself as an international centre, which will probably have more links in developing countries than in Europe.
This interview and those with the keynote speakers at the iCCYS opening are based on interviews by Ginger da Silva of Radio Netherlands, the Dutch international broadcasting service.
Q: You became involved in the rights of the child in 1981, as a board member of Defence for Children International. Since then, there has been a Convention on the Rights of the Child, two global summits and a lot of rhetoric. But has the situation of children changed much?
subjects of rights, rather than the objects of our policies’
KT: We are much more aware of the problems, but children’s situation has not improved. On the contrary: they are suffering because of the economic recession, development aid is stagnating and no one in practice recognises that they are people with rights. But we are now much better able to expose abuses. For example, it is a global priority to get all children into school. My question is: why? Education is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It can easily be used to indoctrinate children. There are three former ministers of education in Rwanda coming up before international tribunals accused of abusing education in preparation for genocide.
What we need is a whole
Q: If education is not the answer, what is?
new form of thinking – but
KT: There is no single solution because all children and young people should be entitled to all their rights. We tend to treat children either as our property, as adults-to-be who we have to teach to be like us.
young people. We are pushing children into a more or less uniform model of education, the same one we passed through: you go to primary school, secondary school and maybe university, and then you get a job in the public sector. But today there are no more jobs in the public sector. So we are preparing them for a labour market that no longer
that idea antagonises everyone, from parents to political leaders
Q: You seem to be saying that education is appropriate for some children in some places but not in others. Is it not much more comfortable if you have a set of norms to work from?
exists, rather than thinking of different life expectations and skills, or the types of knowledge that young people want to develop.
KT: No, it isn’t. We must recognise that education should adapt to children and
Q: What advice do you have for iCCYS?
KT: I was delighted to hear that the iCCYS
was focusing on both children and young people. The international community embraced the rights of the child easily because it is a safe and a-political issue. But once people realised that they have to debate issues like whether children have the right to sex education, they found themselves in a political minefield. So they pulled out, and went back to safe issues like preschool education, vaccination and nutrition. Babies and young children don’t organise riots or have subversive political ideas. Juveniles aren’t cute. Who wants to deal with 13 to 20-year-olds? Somehow they fall between the cracks. It would be a very simple exercise to ask young people what kind of jobs they would like to create for themselves. We would get very practical, imaginative suggestions, but it has not occurred to anyone to ask them. This requires a mental shift. We must start seeing them as subjects of rights, rather than as objects of our policies.
6 / iCCYS
BIBLIONEF
international Centre for Child and Youth Studies
For many children in the world reading is an impossible luxury, while they would
‘Adults don’t like sharing
delight in the opportunity to read and
power with anyone,
network of NGO’s which aims to address
let alone young people’
children’s books to deprived children
youth development, and was Chief
politics. But young people reflect what is happening in society. South Africa is currently facing some of the biggest challenges since the end of apartheid: AIDS, violence, crime and poverty. The media tends to blame a lot of these problems on young people - we have to fight that perspective.
Executive Officer of the National Youth
Q: How do you go about doing that?
Steve Mokwena is the director of ModjadjiWorks, a social change communication agency specialising in
Commission in the office of the then deputy president, Thabo Mbeki.
SM: Our organisation has chosen the media as a platform for change, to try and promote a different view of young people. But that is a double-edged sword. We can tell society to respect and involve young people, but we also tell young people that they have to take their own responsibility and get involved.
Q: What are the major problems facing young people in South Africa today?
SM: Our country owes its liberation to young people, but the way society treats them has changed. When apartheid ended, it was difficult to get them into education and employment, so they came to be seen as a problem. New policies were founded on a view of young people as apathetic and materialistic. We try to advocate a different approach, one that sees young people as co-creators of change themselves. Q: Is there any truth behind these stereotypes of young people?
SM: There must some truth in them, a basis on which you say that young people are in trouble, or are not interested in
It’s a matter of planting the seeds of change early and making sure that is carried forward Q: The young people of today are the parents of tomorrow. Is it important to intervene now to prepare them to raise the next generation?
SM: Research shows that if you reach out to young people in their formative years and lay the basis for social consciousness and engagement, that will continue well into their adult lives. So it’s a matter of
planting the seeds of change early and making sure that is carried forward. Q: Is that part of the problem: a group of adults now in power, who feel they have achieved their goals, and who are now reluctant to accommodate a new vision of how they should be working in society?
SM: There was recently a campaign to get young people to register as voters. It was preceded by a lot of talk from adults about how engaged they were when they were young, how young people don’t appreciate the sacrifices they made. I wrote an article saying that political involvement goes beyond just voting. Young people must be part of the solution-seeking process at all levels, but adults make no space for them to get involved. Adults don’t like sharing power with anyone, let alone young people. And then they are surprised when young people say adults are not interested in what they have to say, that they only call upon them when they need them to vote. Q: What is your message for the iCCYS?
SM: It should start from the premise that young people and children have agency. They are not just victims or target groups. They are part of the solution. When young people are involved, there are not only clear benefits for themselves, but even more for the communities in which they live.
learn. Biblionef is a small international
this imbalance by providing new
/ 7
Biblionef Fighting illiteracy among children Aagje van Heekeren
all over the world.
ILLITERACY AS AN OBSTACLE TO FREEDOM Many countries in the world are faced with extremely high illiteracy levels. Illiteracy is one of the largest remaining obstacles to true freedom. 20% of children in developing countries do not enjoy any education at all, while Unesco estimates that 862 million adults in the world are totally illiterate. That is almost one sixth of the world population. Illiteracy strips people of their dignity, leaves them vulnerable to abuse and prevents them from participating fully in life. Perhaps worst of all, it reinforces negative stereotypes of ignorance. This is an unacceptable situation, which demands urgent attention from all of us. Literacy is a right, not a privilege; it is therefore the responsibility of those who are literate to assist in the process of eradicating illiteracy and its partners poverty and despair. OPEN UP THEIR WORLD The Biblionef organisations are committed to opening up the world to children who do not have books. Without books, the doors of knowledge, freedom and progress will remain shut. Our goal is to provide deprived children with new reading books in their mother tongue, thus helping them understand the world around them and lay the solid foundation of knowledge and awareness which is every person’s birthright. The Biblionef organisations provide 500,000 books a year to hundreds of projects like school libraries, orphanages and other institutions for childcare in more than 60 countries.
(Foto: Biblionef)
In every country, we work together with other organisations and with local communities. THE JOY OF READING The challenges are great and it is certainly not plain sailing, but that strengthens our resolve to bring the joy of reading to underprivileged children all over the world. Literacy has a positive effect on birth control, health care, the economy and democracy. A recent development in the field of health care is the publication of a children’s book by Dutch author Hyltje Vink on HIV/AIDS, which aims to break the taboo surrounding HIV/AIDS and make it a topic for discussion amongst children and their parents. Biblionef is facilitating the translation of the book into English and several African languages, and its publication and distribution.
HOW TO CONTACT BIBLIONEF All Biblionef organisations are fully dependent on fundraising. Biblionef Nederland is located in the Royal Library in The Hague (email: biblionef@kb.nl; Dutch website: www.biblionef.nl). Biblionef France can be contacted at biblionef@wanadoo.fr. Biblionef South Africa provides books in the eleven recognised South African languages (email: bibsa@iafrica.com; website in English: www.biblionefsa.org.za). The name BIBLIONEF comes from the words ‘biblio’, a book, a source of knowledge, development and discovery, and ‘nef’, a ship, originally the link between continents and symbol of adventure. Aagje van Heekeren is Executive Director of Biblionef Netherlands. She can be contacted at kocon@heekeren.nl
8 / ALUMNI NEWS
INTERVIEW BEN PHILLIPS
/ 9
Alumni News Syria ISS would like to thank Kim Duistermaat, Director of the Netherlands Institute for Academic Studies in Damascus (NIASD) and ISS alumnus Ziad Shalaan (International Relations and Development 1982-1983) who made it possible for the Institute to participate in the Higher Education and Training Exhibition held in Damascus on 22-25 January. On the NIASD stand, alumni from ISS, UNESCO-IHE and the Universities of Amsterdam, Leiden, Rotterdam and Utrecht provided information to potential students. The ISS promotion film was shown on a big television screen. Ziad Shalaan Visitors to the fair were especially interested in courses aimed at professionals, and in PhDs. More detailed information on the fair can be obtained from the NIASD Director at www.niasd/org or irector@niasd.org. See also www.svuonline.org for more information on the Syrian Virtual University.
Costa Rica In February, Johan van Dijk, Head of the ISS Office of Research, Projects and Advisory Services (ORPAS) had a meeting with seven ISS alumni in Costa Rica. Irene Suarez, Luis Ovarez, Kifah Sasa, Ana Kristina Rossi, Melania Portilla, Ugalde Oscar and Luis Rivera graduated from the Institute between 1968 and 2003 and now work at a variety of organisations, including the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture and the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica (UNA). Johan van Dijk was in Costa Rica on behalf of ISS to attend the presentation of the Omar Dengo award.
Ben Phillips was a student at ISS in the Local and Regional Development programme from 2000-2001. He was one of the instigators of what was to become a course in Children and Development at the Institute. DevISSues talked to him about the origins of the course and the shift in thinking on CYD.
The award was presented to the country and people of the Netherlands, in recognition of the ongoing cooperation between UNA and Dutch higher education institutions. The meeting with the alumni took place at the Costa Rican branch of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), ISS’ counterpart organisation in an institutional capacity-building project focusing on local economic development. They all said how much they had enjoyed their stay at ISS and in the Netherlands. They also made a number of critical observations, which will take into account to improve the quality of training at the Institute.
Liberia ISS would like to congratulate Vanah Gayflor, participant in Women and Development 2001-2002, who was appointed Minister for Gender in Liberia at the end of last year.
Alumni correspondents
Announce a meeting
In the last DevISSues the editors made an appeal for ISS alumni to volunteer as correspondents for the magazine. We have already heard from alumni in Costa Rica, Gambia, Ghana and Iran. We would like to thank them for their prompt responses and look forward to receiving more replies.
A short time ago, we added a form to the ISS alumni website, on which alumni could fill in information about conferences, workshops or seminars in their country or region. So far, few alumni have taken advantage of this facility. The editors would very much appreciate your active input in filling in the conference form regularly. We will then publish the information – perhaps in a summarised form – in DevISSues or on the forthcoming electronic discussion platform attached to DevISSues.
Contact a classmate You can look for fellow alumni on the ISS website by following the path Alumni, Stay in touch, Contact a classmate. It is, however, important that you fill in all the fields in the electronic form. If you don’t we can’t help you to trace your former classmates.
Please keep us informed about your career developments or send us news of other alumni you are in touch with by mailing is at alumni@iss.nl
Time for a new approach Q: Could you tell us about how the idea for a course in Children and Development at ISS came about?
BP: A lot of the students at the Institute were already working with children and young people. Secondly, many of us were learning about the history of the feminist movement and how it had challenged development. This led us to apply this thinking to children as a group who are ignored and exploited. We felt that it was time for a new approach that would recognise children’s right to have a say in what happens to them. Rather than wait for ISS to take the initiative, we set up an email campaign calling for support and demanding that something be done in the short term. To our surprise, the ISS Executive Board agreed with us that the Institute had the resources and the talent to give it a go. It was a gamble for ISS. I was very impressed at how the Institute was able to make the decision in such a short time, and to redirect resources to accommodate it. A lot of staff members were interested in children and development, but they also asked the students what they wanted to learn on the course. This made ISS a pioneer in two senses: it was one of the first institutes to set up a course in C&D, and it did so by respecting its students
as participants in the process. Some people thought the course would be about how cute children are. But of course the lives of a lot of children aren't cute; they have to survive in extremely difficult circumstances.
You cannot achieve a propoor world without looking at the position of children. Children are open to neglect, abuse and denial of their human rights. And there are serious economic issues, too. To say that all children should have a good education means devoting more resources to basic services. That means less money for tax reductions or military expenditure. And it has wider implications for those concerned with reshaping the world for the benefit of the poor. You cannot achieve a pro-poor world without looking at the position of children. Q: Do you feel that there has been a real change in attitudes in NGOs, in academia and in policy-making circles?
BP: In NGOs, there has been a huge shift. In academia, too, in the theory of how children are understood. In governments and multilateral institutions, and among the general adult public, that
shift has not yet really begun. Many governments are now committed in principle to children’s participation. This is a major component of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but in practice there has been no real transformation in the way children are governed. The change in social attitudes will come eventually. It is easy to buy into the rhetoric, but it is important to understand what it implies. Not just listening to children a little more, but a new and respectful relationship. Violence, for example, cannot be a part of that. I think it will take a long time to get rid of parental violence, but it is possible – it has been illegal in Sweden for 25 years. This is not to say that children do not need extra support and help. Children themselves say they need guidance from parents and other adults they trust. So we are not talking about a world where there is no difference between children and adults, but saying that the adult role of wise counsel should be based on natural authority that comes from genuine knowledge and support, not on autocratic power. Authority based on mutual respect works better than a power system based on fear or coercion. Ben Phillips works for Oxfam. He can be contacted at BenPhillips@OxfamInternational.org
10 / CHILDREN AND CONFLICT
CHILDREN AND CONFLICT / 11
Children and Conf lict The lives of children and young people can be deeply affected by armed conflict. The articles on the following pages look at different aspects of children’s experience of conflict and war. Below, ISS alumna Jessica Lenz examines the role that former girl soldiers in Uganda could play in the peace-building process. On the following page, there is a report on a recent seminar at iCCYS on children growing up in violence. Lastly, two case studies - one from Sri Lanka and the other looking at Sudanese refugee children in Ethiopia - question the value of traditional Foto: Lineair
trauma-based approaches to helping those affected by war.
Unnoticed by much of the world, the people of Northern Uganda are mired in a brutal 18-year civil war, in which thousands of people have been abducted and forced to serve
Armed with Resilience
combat inflicts, these girls have often been forced to rapidly mature, become resourceful and otherwise develop skills in order to survive under the extreme and demanding combat environment. Often, these skills make them an excellent resource for peace-building efforts. Recent research suggests that, unlike their male counterparts, girls who have fought in conflicts are more strongly committed to peaceful solutions and reconciliation. I came to Northern Uganda to study ways in which the experiences and survival skills of formerly abducted girl child soldiers can be tapped as a resource for peace-building and for the girls’ own
social reintegration. The research project engages 30 formerly abducted girl child soldiers between the ages of 14 and 25 in a 6-month dialogue of interviews, group discussions and workshops that will lay the foundation for a peace-building activity in which the girls themselves become the messengers of their own change. The activity will train the girls in photographic skills. They will then design an exhibition of photographs in which they are the photographers and messengers of peace in their own documentary project. The emphasis is on how the girls can use the camera to tell their stories, to communicate their thoughts,
Children Growing Up in Violence iCCYS Living Room Seminar
in both the rebel and government forces, and many more have fled
A Dialogue with Girl Child Soldiers
The first iCCYS ‘living room’ seminar, held at ICDI on 26 February, brought
their homes. The war between the
in Northern Uganda
together an international group of
Ugandan government and the rebels, mainly the Lord’s Resistance Army, has
researchers, programme developers
Jessica Lenz
and practitioners to share their ideas resulted in widespread human rights abuses - particularly the use of children as soldiers by both sides. It is estimated that over 30,000 children have been abducted since the start of the fighting. In Northern Uganda, two thirds of children serving in the militia-controlled forces of the LRA are girls. While many are used as porters or perform domestic duties for the commanders, they also serve as soldiers who undergo military training, are forced to fight along side the rebel forces. Once they reach puberty, the girls are often forced into sexual slavery and given away as rewards for commanders who do well in battle. They are subjected
to rape, forced pregnancy and maternity, and to the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. It is unknown how many girls are still in captivity and unable to escape. Many spend years with the rebels before they manage to escape or are released because they slow down the movement of the troops. They return often either pregnant or with children to whom they have given birth while in captivity. Though there are reception centres to help rehabilitate and reintegrate the girls, few if any programmes take into account the resilient qualities they have developed while serving as child combatants. They are not seen as resilient and articulate individuals whose experiences and views can positively impact their situation let alone positively impact post-conflict
peace-building. Rather they are seen as having endured negative experiences which they must be helped to unlearn and recover from in order to grow normally as children or adolescents. This negative representation makes reintegration even more problematic. Girls labelled as ‘raped’ or as ‘ex-child soldier’, or those carrying a child of the ‘enemy’ are stigmatised and marginalised within their communities. Misunderstandings among support workers and negative imagery in the media create a false reality that strengthens this stigmatisation.Inaccurate media portrayals of former girl child soldiers do a great disservice not only to the girls themselves, but to the community’s attempts at peace-building. Despite the physical and psychological harm that
and experiences on ‘children growing up in violence’. The main purpose of the seminar was to share information, sensitise the participants to the needs of the increasing numbers of children who fall victim to civil strife and warfare, and to look at the implications for intervention, training and research. It was organised as a follow-up to an earlier session with the Trust of Childhood, Family and Community Education in Jerusalem, which had brought a small group of Palestinian specialists on youth and violence to Leiden. Two young asylum seekers from Russia, Jelena (14) and her sister Olesia (12), talked about their hopes,
wishes and their uncertain futures, setting the tone of the seminar by putting names and faces to the ‘issues’ that were to be discussed. Unfortunately two other groups of juvenile asylum seekers from conflicttorn regions (Afghanistan, Angola and Iran) were unable to attend because of bad weather conditions. Ahmad Fahim Jaber of Al-Quds University, Rosalind Da’eem of the Haifa Social Development Committee, Adnan Abdelrazek of the Jerusalem Consulting Office for Development and Public Relations, and Farid Abu Gosh of the Trust outlined the situation of Palestinian children from different perspectives. In their accounts of the devastating and long-lasting effects of continuing violence on all concerned, including those on both sides who commit violence, central themes included the translation of inter-social into intra-social violence, the relationship between humiliation and violence, violence as a value in codes of conduct at the expense of traditional forms of mutual respect, the absence of fathers, the resilience and self-reliance of Palestinian families and children, and
feelings, and opinions. The project empowers the girls to talk about their experiences, communicating their dreams, their strengths and their struggles. It gives them a chance to realise and communicate their peace-building leadership potential while educating those within and outside their communities and nations. Enabling these girls to become real participants in the documentation of their own lives through the use of photographs will enhance their own confidence and self-esteem.
Jessica Lenz was a participant in the Children and Youth in Development diploma course at ISS in 2003. She can be contacted at jessicalenz@hotmail.com
the effectiveness of community-based intervention. The ‘coalition of the powerless’ (women and children) against traditional authority patterns, and the crucial role of ‘empowered’ women in keeping families and communities together were particularly stressed. Simon Oucul, who works for HealthNeed in Uganda and is currently studying at ISS, spoke of the recent history of violence in an otherwise peace-minded country. He explained how difficult it is for former child warriors to re-integrate into their families and communities and to heal the rift in trust that has emerged between young people and adults. He saw a major role for international development agencies in restoring community life. The ensuing discussion focused on a range of issues, including gender differences and experiences of successful practices and processes of reconciliation. In his closing remarks, Ben White noted that the participants had considered some of the multiple and complex forms of violence which shape children’s experience of childhood, whether as victims or witnesses, or through becoming involved themselves as actors. Unfortunately, there was no time to explore children’s role in countering violence, i.e. as active agents who can rebuild their communities and act as peacemakers.
12 / CHILDREN AND CONFLICT
CHILDREN AND CONFLICT / 13
Trends in Psychosocial Intervention with Children Affected by War Sarala Emmanuel roles within the community • improving children’s access to resources such as education and health services • supplementing children’s nutritional intake • improving children’s physical environment These strategies were implemented through a variety of activities, including art, story-telling, handwork, collective games, meetings with parents, liaising with education authorities, facilitating visits from a local doctor and providing a safe area for children’s activities.
In the last decade in Sri Lanka, there has been a remarkable growth of NGOled initiatives to provide psychosocial interventions for children in conflict areas. These have taken many forms: from after-school play centres to skills training in conflict-resolution; from vocational training to formal counselling sessions; and from psycho-education to support groups for mothers. FROM TRAUMA TO RESILIENCE The Psychosocial Support Programme is a unit of the IWTHI Trust, a local nongovernment institution based in Colombo. It emerged in the mid-1990s, at a time when there was growing dissatisfaction with the traditional trauma-focused interventions being implemented in Sri Lanka’s war-affected communities. There was a growing realisation within the PSP that conceptualising the suffering caused by conflict primarily in terms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or associated mental disorders was a hindrance to providing adequate support for people in conflict situations. The PSP’s main insight was that the biomedical concepts used to understand human suffering in the context of war frequently served to obscure the actual nature of human experiences and concerns – which more often revolved around issues of material security and disrupted social relations. Whilst acknowledging that some individuals did require treatment of severe psychological disorders, the PSP believed that the priority for the majority was more generalised support to enable them to better access material and social resources. The mid-1990s also saw the articulation of many alternative approaches to psychosocial intervention, which acknowledged children’s capacity for resilience and aimed primarily to enhance and support this. Inspired by such examples, the PSP
Foto: Lineair
attempted to develop interventions that addressed the social, emotional and material concerns of children in ways that strengthened their capacity to manage adverse circumstances or challenges to their well-being. In collaboration with various implementing organisations, the PSP has developed small-scale psychosocial interventions for children. For example, in one project, the strategies employed to improve children’s psychosocial well-being included: • enhancing relationships between children and their peers, and with significant adults • building social skills • building children’s confidence, creativity and feelings of security • helping to build children’s decisionmaking capacities and leadership
TOWARDS CHILD-CENTRED, PARTICIPATORY PSYCHOSOCIAL PROGRAMMING With an increasing awareness of the literature on how children’s experiences of conflict and suffering may be distinct from that of adults, the PSP is currently attempting to develop psychosocial programming that is driven by children’s own perspectives. Whilst child-participatory programming has long been an objective of many child-focused organisations around the world, in Sri Lanka few psychosocial interventions have incorporated these goals or values in their work with children. However, as participation becomes an ever-present term in development jargon, the logic of the resilience approach seems to be pushing agencies to share power and responsibility with the children they aim to assist. This development, however, represents a radical challenge to the way in which psychosocial interventions have been designed and administered, with serious ramifications for the relationships between children, local communities, implementing agencies and donor institutions. Sarala Emmanuel worked with the PSP between 2001-2003 as project coordinator. She is currently following a Masters in Development Studies at ISS, majoring in Women, Gender and Development. She can be contacted at wgd0309@iss.nl
Children of the Forgotten War In 2002 psychologist Brechtje Paardekooper was awarded a PhD for her research into the effects of intervention programmes on the well-being of Sudanese refugee children. DevISSues
The project comprised two programmes working with groups of Sudanese refugee children in the 6-13 age group living in Addis Ababa. The first (Psychodynamic) programme concentrated on the trauma of war and subsequent flight, and the second (Contextual) on the problems facing the children on a daily basis. There was also a control group of children who did not take part in either programme.
talked to her about her findings and their implications for policy on children in conflict situations. Q: Could you tell us about your research with Sudanese refugee children and how the project came about?
BP: When I first came up with the idea, the trauma lobby was still quite strong in the West. But I had discovered myself while working in Uganda that a traumabased approach had a limited effect in treating children dealing with the experience of war. Although the trauma itself was very important, the children were troubled more by other, more immediate problems – such as how to find enough food and water, how to survive. This coincided with a wider shift in emphasis in psychosocial approaches, from traumabased solutions to addressing the material and social environment in which children find themselves.
Q: Were the results of the programme as you expected?
BP: No. We expected the Psychodynamic programme to have a more positive effect on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms, and the Contextual programme to be more effective in treating depression-related problems. But the children in the Psychodynamic group actually made little progress on PTSD compared to the control group. In fact sometimes the symptoms got worse, while in the Contextual group they got better. We think that this was related to the children’s living conditions. They had very little freedom of movement, nowhere to play, and had to deal with discrimination. Q: Do think the programme made a sustainable difference to the children’s lives?
BP: It is difficult to say. Unfortunately, shortly after the programme ended, the refugees were unexpectedly moved from
Addis Ababa to camps in the border area, which were very unsafe. I would have liked to have assessed the children again after a few months but, because of the evacuation and a lack of funds, that was not possible. The Contextual programme did however produce a significant and measurable improvement. I think that showed that a trauma-based approach is not effective for children in these situations. They are too busy trying to survive in the here and now to be confronted with the trauma that put them there. That is not to say that they did not or will not have to deal with their traumas. Studies of other traumatised groups suggest that they can often continue quite effectively with their lives, and that it comes out years later. We should be aware of this and ensure that a support structure is in place. Another important factor is that local methods of dealing with trauma – such as rituals and theatre – may be more effective than our own. Support structures should therefore take account of local culture and traditional forms of healing, but also be prepared to provide professional medical help if the psychological symptoms are too serious. Brechtje Paardekooper is currently senior policy advisor at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She can be contacted at psychology@brechtje.nl
14 / TEACHING NEWS
COURSES IN CYD / 15
Courses in Children, Youth and Development
Teaching News
Innovative Diploma Programme Explores Strategies for Universalising Socioeconomic Security for the Poor Kristin Komives On 21 February, 14 ISS diploma students and two ISS staff members left The Hague for Ahmedabad, India. This marked the beginning of the field study portion of ISS’s innovative 10-week diploma programme in Universalising Socioeconomic Security for the Poor. This programme offers participants two study options: 10 weeks of study at ISS, or 5 weeks in The Hague followed by 5 weeks in India hosted by two partner institutions. Through the partner institutions – the SelfEmployed Women’s Association in Ahmedabad and the Center for Development Studies in Trivandrum – participants have a chance to examine several very different approaches to social security provision. In Ahmedabad, participants are immersed in the everyday lives of SEWA’s members (urban and rural women working in the informal sector) through an Exposure Dialogue Programme. The short stay in the SEWA members’ homes brings to life the problems of poverty and insecurity discussed in the course. It is also a unique opportunity to observe SEWA’s social security programmes, which seek to provide insurance, child care, shelter and health security to informal sector workers and their families. SEWA – one of the ISS’s partners in this innovative teaching initiative – views childcare as an integral part of social security provision.
After two weeks in Ahmedabad, the diploma participants are off to Trivandrum in the state of Kerala. At the Center for Development Studies, they learn about the ‘Kerala model’ of development, which has received worldwide recognition.
Changes in the global economy present challenges for this model. Participants explore these challenges, as well as innovative social security initiatives designed to tackle them. One of the many field trips and activities is an opportunity to discuss Kerala’s welfare funds with informal sector workers. These funds bring the state, workers, and employers together to provide industry-wide social security. Experience with USS has sparked other teaching and research initiatives at ISS on the subject of socioeconomic security and poverty. ISS faculty members are developing a wider, joint research programme on social security initiatives with partners in India, China, and Pakistan. 2004 is the inaugural year of a new diploma on poverty that will be taught by ISS faculty members in Tanzania through a combination of distance learning and intensive week-long seminars. In future years, the USS diploma programme itself may offer additional opportunities for field-study in Africa, Latin America or Asian countries other than India. For the USS diploma course, contact Kristin Komives at komives@iss.nl. For the new diploma course in Tanzania, contact Marc Wuyts at wuyts@iss.nl.
In the last few years, there has been a growing awareness of the special problems that confront children and young people as a result of the contradictions and uncertainties of economic development and the threats it may pose for their security and well-being. For people interested in how children and youth cope with such threats and the diverse challenges of poverty and economic and social injustice, there are a number of innovative courses at ISS. Most of these are offered by lecturers within the Staff Group ‘Rural Development, Environment and Population Studies’.
Population & Development is one of the specialisations which lead to the MA in Development Studies. In it, students can explore the inter-relationships between population dynamics, poverty and social development and appreciate how political, economic and demographic context is crucial for the design of effective interventions to promote social inclusion. Within Population & Development, there is a spring term course Children, Youth and Development which focuses on debates about childhood and youth in the social sciences, development studies and international law. It explores the rights of children in the development process and examines the problematical relationship between work and education in the lives of the young. DIPLOMA PROGRAMME This course is also part of the diploma programme in Children, Youth and Development, now in its third year, which runs for ten weeks from late April to early July. Associated with the new International Centre for Child and Youth Studies, this diploma challenges participants to broaden their analysis of the problems of children and of the
policies that address them. It especially welcomes applicants from international, national and local development agencies, as well as from institutions of higher education, who deal with the problems of children and youth in practice, research or policy. In addition, there is a three-week intensive course, Understanding and Managing Reproductive Health, in September, which focuses on the development, analysis and management of reproductive health from a gendersensitive and participatory perspective and pays particular attention to the problems that face adolescents today in developing countries. One of the advantages of this course, which is oriented to the needs of young and mid-career professionals from government and NGOs, is that it can be readily tailored to the requirements of particular organisations. Information about all these courses may be obtained from the Staff Group IV administrator, Antonella Sorrentino (sorrentino@iss.nl)
For information on the research initiative on social security, contact Ashwani Saith at saith@iss.nl.
Please see the first page of the ISS website (www.iss.nl; Studying at ISS) for the latest information on new teaching programmes.
Refresher Courses Each year, ISS organises refresher courses for its alumni on different topics and in different regions. The courses are set up in close collaboration with an organisation in the region. The refresher courses are intended for ISS alumni who studied at ISS 5-12 years ago. They are a way of refreshing alumni’s knowledge and provide an excellent opportunity to meet fellow alumni. If you would like a refresher course to be organised in your region on a certain topic, please contact Wieke Blaauw at blaauw@iss.nl, preferably before 1 October 2004. The Dutch
Government has a special fund to finance refresher courses. Information can be found on the Nuffic website (www.nuffic.nl, Search: refresher course).
The next refresher course will be on ‘Strategies for combating corruption in Africa.’ Location: Lagos, Nigeria Date: 17-31 November 2004 Convenor: P. Mihyo For more details, contact I. Vos at vosi@iss.nl
Moderated electronic discussion platform DevISSues is introducing a new service on the ISS website (www.iss.nl). As of this number, the main articles will be available on the Internet, some of them in more extensive form than in the printed version. They will also be linked to a moderated electronic discussion platform. We hope in this way to stimulate intellectual debate among our readers and encourage them to respond to articles. We would like
to invite you to take part in the debate and to let us know if you are satisfied with this new service. Please tell us if you experience any problems with this new service. You can access it by going to www.iss.nl/Publications/DevISSues.
16 / BEN WHITE
BEN WHITE / 17
Changing Indonesian Childhoods: A Three-Generation Study in a Javanese Village Ben White During 1999-2000 I returned to the Javanese village of Kali Loro where I had lived for 15 months as a young PhD researcher in 1972-73. Besides planning to write a social history of this village I was specially interested in changes in the lives of children and young people and in particular in what some authors call ‘the prolongation of childhood’: the postponement of adult status and responsibilities through longer school enrolment, rising age at first marriage and later entry into employment.
traced the members of the same 20 households and in each case found at least one of the children from the 1972-3 sample, now 27 years older, still resident in the village, married and living with his/her own children. We repeated the time-budget study with both adults and children in these second-generation households. The young people we studied are, literally, the children of those we studied in 1972-3.
The black-and-white illustration shows one of the original families, a small farmer with his two wives and their children, standing in front of their wood-and-bamboo house; their eldest son, who was then 15 (standing behind his father) can be seen again as a 42-year old head of household in the coloured photo, in front of his newly-built house with his wife, mother (now widowed) and 11-year old son in 1999.
both inside and outside the household, most had experience of earning money and often used these earnings for their own needs such as clothes, school fees, snacks and tobacco. By 1999, nearly all children were staying in school until at least completion of lower secondary, and in most cases until completion of upper secondary school; the new generation of children spends between 30 to 40 hours per week in school and home study, and correspondingly less time in work. Although their parents tend to complain that children don’t help them any more, they are actually still quite busy, but in a different set of activities; gender differences have sharpened, with girls more confined to domestic chores and boys still having some involvement in directly productive work, but with both boys and girls hardly involved at all in any activities which earn them money. One father explained proudly how he had never allowed his daughter to miss a day of school to work in the fields, even if he had to hire workers in her place; the girl herself complained that she would like to help on the farm so that the money saved could be used to pay for school fees, to get her into a better secondary school. Here we see a concrete example of the way in which older children are increasingly identified as not involved in the production of value: paradoxically, as
Many signs of material improvement were obvious: better roads, housing, electrification, irrigation, education, etc. However, these rural development efforts had generated little or no new rural employment opportunities, or at least none that are attractive to secondary-school leavers. Many of the children of today’s landless and landpoor households move out of the village to work in factories in West and Central Java, while others join earlier generations of migrant relatives now established in commercial farming or small-scale enterprise on other islands.
Using oral history and two detailed time-allocation studies I tried to trace changes in child work over a period of roughly three generations. Relying on the memories of our older informants (through interviews in 1972-3 and 1999-2000) and some secondary data, it was possible to reconstruct the childhoods of those who are now the grandparents of today’s children. Then, using detailed data on children’s time allocation in 20 small-farm and landless households (collected in 1972-3) I analysed the activities of the next generation of children, i.e. those who are now the parents of today’s children. Finally, in 1999-2000 we
These shifts raise many questions. Is the work that children formerly did no longer necessary? What explains the determination of children to stay in school (and, the sacrifices made by their parents to keep them there) as
long as possible, despite the lack of any evidence that this will open for them better opportunities in the labour market? Does it help to see school attendance in the modern world, as a (growing) form of obligatory work? Or, as it may be seen by many teenagers themselves, as basically a way to postpone ‘real’ work?
Ben White is Professor of Rural Sociology at ISS, and co-director of iCCYS. He can be contacted at white@iss.nl
ISS past and forthcoming events All Public Lectures start at 16.00 and take place in the ISS Aula 2004
How have the activities of children changed in the past few decades? Many of those who are now grandparents (those born in the late 1930s or early 1940s) attended the village school, but only for three years and only for a few hours each day, completing school at about 10 years of age. There was plenty of work to do, and both boys and girls were involved in work of many kinds, helping their parents and earning money in the farm and non-farm labour market. The next generation – those born in the early 1960s, who were of school-going age during my field research in 1972 – mostly stayed in school until age 15, but school had not yet become drastically disruptive of children’s work; they remained familiar with day-to-day work,
children’s needs for a greater and more sophisticated variety of consumer goods grows, they are increasingly isolated from the kinds of activities which might have earned them some money to pay for them, and increasingly dependent on their parents for these needs.
5 February 3 March 25-27 March 22 April
28 April 27 May
June 24 June
23 September
Inaugural Address Prof. Richard Robison. Lecture can be ordered via shaw@iss.nl Public lecture: Multilateral Trade, Global Gain: Prospects and Pitfalls Post-Cancun by Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Minister of Economic Affairs. Hague Academic Coalition Annual Conference ' From Peace to Justice', including ISS Parallel Session on the economic and social dimensions of Peace & Conflict. Public lecture: Poverty Within Europe’s Border and Beyond by Dr Max Spoor, Associate Professor at ISS and Coordinator of the ISS Centre for the Study of Transition and Development (CESTRAD), followed by a debate chaired by Prof. Joris Voorhoeve, President of the Dutch Society of International Affairs and Minister of State. Inaugural Address: Prof. Amina Mama, 2003/2004 Professor of the Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity. Public lecture: Illegal Trafficking in an Expanding Europe by Daan Everts, Head Taskforce Dutch Presidency of the OSCE. Public Debate Series ISS/CESTRAD in cooperation with the Clingendael Institute, and the Netherlands Society of International Affairs/NGIZ. ISS-SID Public Lecture by Prof. Amina Mama (in Amsterdam). Public lecture: The New Neighbours of Europe: A Political Perspective by Frans Timmermans, Member of the Dutch Parliament. Public Debate Series ISS/CESTRAD in cooperation with the Clingendael Institute, and the Netherlands Society of International Affairs/NGIZ. Public lecture organised by ISS and the Clingendael Institute. The speaker will be Xue Hanqin, Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands.
1 8 / S T U D Y I N G C Y D AT I S S
EDWARD SEMBIDDE MWEBAZE / 19
Studying Children, Youth and Development at ISS Children, youth and development are a part of the programme for many of the students who come to ISS. Here, PhD participants Pandu Hailonga and Sharada Srinivasan describe their research and MA student Simon Oucul tells us about his study and his work with children and young people in Uganda.
Simon Oucul The effects of armed conf lict on the health of children and young people
Pandu Hailonga A socio-historical analysis of adolescent sexuality and reproductive behaviour in Namibia: competing, complimenting and conf licting discourses Governmental and non-governmental organisations in Namibia have implemented a variety of programmes and policies to address the negative consequences of adolescent sexuality and reproductive behaviour (ASRB). Despite these attempts, current trends suggest a need for a better understanding of the issues. This study sets out to critically examine the socio-historical aspects of ASRB. A further aim is to scrutinise the interactions between adolescents and aspects of social structures and to analyse the interplay between modern and traditional institutions. The study also examined the relevance of generation differences. The study discloses the complexity of adolescent sexuality and reproductive behaviour in a hybrid context, in which religion seems to be losing its moral authority, parents have lost power over their adolescents and the dominant culture is being taking over by society. There is no one structure to provide direction for adolescents. They are faced with inconsistent and contradictory discourses, yet society expects them to make meaningful decisions without proper guidance from traditions or modern Western values.
Sharada Srinivasan Development, gender discrimination and survival: female infanticide practices in Tamil Nadu, south India
HIV/AIDS and Protecting the Rights of Children Affected by Armed Conf lict in Northern Uganda
kinship support, further constrains their autonomy and the ways in which they define and pursue their interests. These adult experiences in turn are normalised and internalised very early as girls and boys.
According to a recent estimate based on the 2001 census, declining sex ratios in India, particularly in the age group 0-4 years, yielded about 39 million ‘missing’ women. While technology-aided sexselective abortion emerges as the single most important factor contributing to this decline, in the study area – district Salem in Tamil Nadu – it has also led to a sharp increase in female neglect and female infanticide. A distinct feature of the present trend in declining sex ratios in south India is the intensification of daughter non-preference. Far from being a repository of tradition, the causes for female elimination and the mechanisms which create and sustain an environment in which such elimination is imaginable are unleashed by development processes characterised by an inherent male bias. Three processes are viewed as underlying the current trend of declining sex ratios in India: economic modernisation and liberalisation; urbanisation and the extent of rural-urban linkages; and the threshold of women’s well-being and residue of son preference. Contrary to popular perceptions of them as victims, women are sharply aware of the opportunities and constraints that they face and exercise agency in the form of connivance, cooperation, initiative, acquiescence, indifference and resistance. The emergence and spread of female infanticide practices signals a deterioration in women’s status even as there are improvements in various aspects of well-being, mainly because these gains do not necessarily translate into enhanced entitlements and capabilities. Women are caught in a cycle of disempowerment which, along with declining
Simon Oucul is a participant in the MA Programme in Population and Development. In his home region of Northern Uganda, he works with the NGO HealthNeed Uganda to support children and young people affected by HIV/AIDS. He told Dev ISSues about his work and the value of his study at ISS. ‘Children can be affected by HIV/AIDS in many ways, not only through being directly infected. If people close to them become sick and perhaps die, they may need psychological counselling, and support in finding food, shelter, access to services, etc. Traditionally in Africa, children who lose their parents are taken care of by the community, but there is a stigma attached to HIV/AIDS, which means that sufferers and their children are isolated. We fight those attitudes by working with small projects that help communities to tackle the problems themselves within a traditional setting.’ ‘The approach is definitely effective. In the four years that I was working with HealthNeed Uganda before coming to ISS, there was a great change in attitudes. There are now many projects, and a positive respect for children’s rights – they are no longer being withdrawn from school, for example.’ ‘I came to ISS to refresh my knowledge. The course is very relevant to my area of work, in terms of reproductive health and children, youth and development. I am doing my thesis on armed conflict in relation to children’s health. HIV/AIDS is of course a major part of this, but there are many other aspects: displacement, food and nutrition, access to medical treatment, sanitation, employment.’ Pandu Hailonga, Sharanda Srinivasan and Simon Oucul can be contacted at: hailonga@iss.nl, srinivasan@iss.nl and oucul@iss.nl.
Edward Sembidde Mwebaze
Foto: Lineair
Uganda is often seen as a role model in the fight against HIV/AIDS, with the overall prevalence rate dropping from 18% in the early 1990s to an average of about 5-6% to date. This figure, however, hides disparities across the country. Northern Uganda – where the conflict between the rebel group Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and Uganda Government Forces has been raging for 18 years – has an HIV prevalence rate of 12%. HIV/AIDS PREVENTION AMONG DISPLACED AND HOST COMMUNITIES As a result of intensified fighting between the LRA and UPDF, civilians have been displaced into camps. Even the main town, Gulu, has itself become more of a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs), its population swelling from 50,000 to over 110,000. Save the Children Denmark launched the first HIV/AIDS Education and Prevention Programme for the displaced and host communities of Gulu municipality late in 2002. Interventions have focused on sensitising community leaders, parents and guardians, with school communities being specifically targeted. Condoms were distributed to various groups of young people, especially those involved in the transport business and working in bars and restaurants. This resulted in an increase in the number of people going for Voluntary Counselling and Testing (VCT) services and treatment of STDs.
PROTECTION FOR CHILD NIGHT COMMUTERS Thousands of children commute nightly into Gulu and other towns in the north seeking protection and shelter from the LRA. The children sleep on shop verandas at the mercy of thieves and rapists. They also engage in prostitution, to make money or to find a place to stay the night. Save the Children Denmark and a number of NGOs have established night shelters for the children, where they are taught about HIV/AIDS prevention and trained in life skills. Young people have said that they are afraid to seek treatment for STDs because of the negative attitudes of some of the health workers and lack of privacy in the health units. As a result, the focus on increasing young people’s access to STI and HIV/AIDS services has been on establishing adolescent friendly centres near health units and close to IDP camps. This has led to a sharp rise in the number of young people coming freely to the adolescent centres.
food. If a girl is defiled or raped, her parents may compromise her position by asking for an out-of-court settlement. Save the Children Denmark has been involved in promoting child rights clubs in schools to give children an opportunity to identify, report and follow-up child rights abuses themselves. The clubs also teach children how to be assertive and defend their interests. RESPONDING TO THE NEEDS OF FORMERLY ABDUCTED CHILDREN Save the Children has established child protection units within the government forces where formerly abducted children are received and given medication, clothing and food before being transferred to NGO rehabilitation centres. It is also working with the military to develop capacity to deal with HIV/AIDS issues affecting children rescued from the LRA and the young men and women they interact with in conflict zones.
Edward Sembidde Mwebaze is a Senior Programme Officer and Coordinator for the Save the Children
CHILD RIGHTS PROMOTION AND PARTICIPATION In the African tradition, children are seen as property of their parents. Girls are often seen as sources of wealth and might be pulled out of school to get married to provide their families with income or
Uganda Programme. He was a participant in the Children, Youth and Development diploma course at ISS in 2003. He can be contacted at e.sembidde@scd.co.ug
2 0 / B E R N A R D V A N L E E R F O U N D AT I O N
CONFERENCES, SEMINARS AND WORKSHOPS / 21
Bernard van Leer Foundation
Conferences, Seminars and Workshops
Helping Children To Develop Their Innate Potential
International Workshop on
Peter Laugham
Training Needs On 14 November 2003, iCCYS held its first international workshop at ISS on Training Young and Mid-career Professionals in Children Youth and Development: Matching Demand and Supply.
to organise itself in overseeing and supporting grandparent-headed families. Action for Children works with the community to identify caregivers in need of assistance and volunteers to reach the grandmothers and the children. Training in ECD, HIV/AIDS and psychosocial support has been organised and a mobile health care system has been set up. The capacity of the grandparent support groups is built up through training and networking with similar programmes in East Africa. Action for Children is aiming to reach 200 households and between 600 and 800 young children.
The Bernard van Leer Foundation is a private Dutch organisation which works to enhance opportunities for young children in circumstances of social and economic disadvantage by helping them to develop their innate potential. The Foundation’s work is based on children’s rights as well as their needs. It focuses on children from birth to age eight because scientific findings have demonstrated that interventions in the early years of childhood are most effective in yielding lasting benefits. BvLF currently supports projects in around 40 countries, awarding about €17 million in grants per year. The Foundation considers the primary issues affecting young children to include the widespread breakdown of family and community, increasing rich/poor divides, increasing violence, HIV/AIDS, and political and economic instability. While the Foundation cannot address all of these issues and their underlying causes, we try to reinforce the circles of support around children, including their parents and families, the communities they live in, service provision, and the wider policy environment.
At international policy level, BvLF seeks to keep young children on the agenda. In the case of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example, this means giving further reflection and depth to how the rights of young children are understood. The UN’ Millennium Development Goals and the Declaration on Education for All contain much that is relevant for children’s survival and schooling, but could pay closer attention to young children’s development. Two examples illustrate how the Foundation’s priorities have been applied in practice. HIV - UGANDA For the past two years the Foundation has been supporting Action for Children in implementing a family preservation programme in Kyanja, Kampala district, where families caring for children affected by HIV/AIDS are enabled to cope. In the district, 70% of the households are headed by grandmothers. Action for Children has conducted training seminars on orphan care and HIV/AIDS interventions. This has enabled the community
EDUCATION – GUATEMALA For the past decade BvLF has supported the Niños Indígenas Desplazados programme, in cooperation with Enfants Réfugiés du Monde, to develop a community-based preschool system in the Ixil area of Guatemala. This programme addresses the needs of children aged 3 to 6, by providing a bilingual educational environment that fosters creative participation, cultural respect and appreciation. Despite the country having 21 languages, primary school education has traditionally been monolingual. Now more than 22 centres attend to over 2,000 children daily, and the programme has expanded into areas of refugee return in Northern Guatemala. In recent years the Guatemalan government has recognised the programme by granting official status and salaries to the local preschool teachers. The teachers have formed fledgling associations which are beginning to take full responsibility for the preschool programme, fundraising activities and social advocacy. Peter Laugham is Executive Director of the Bernard van Leer Foundation. The Foundation can be contacted at registry@bvleerf.nl
address the gap between the micro, macro and meso level response and the lack of cooperation in addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic and its effects on OVC. Participants at the meeting included a large number of NGOs, representatives from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, research institutes and academia.
The workshop opened with a welcoming word from Prof. Ben White of ISS, co-director iCCYS. He explained that the workshop was a response to the growing need for trained professionals with specialised skills in dealing with childhood and youth issues. The introduction was followed by two addresses. The first speaker was Nora Godwin of UNICEF, who outlined the challenges in delivering learning and staff development in a decentralised international organisation. Then Bill Bell of Save the Children UK spoke on the importance of training in helping organisations like UNICEF and Save the Children to develop a rights-based approach. After the addresses, there were two parallel sessions on ‘Approaches and Dilemmas in Professional Training and Staff Development’ and ‘Contents of Training: New and Emerging Training Needs’. The programme ended with a plenary session which looked back on the two parallel workshop sessions, followed by a general closing discussion. Nico van Oudenhoven, Director of ICDI and co-director of iCCYS formally closed the workshop.
The morning session of the meeting focused on the seriousness and scale of the effects of HIV/AIDS on children, the gap between relevant international agreements and the situation on the ground, and strategies and existing bottlenecks in developing better policies and programmes to address the effects of the pandemic. During the afternoon session, three working groups discussed the response at community/civil society level, national level in the affected countries and the level of Dutch NGOs and government. The report of this meeting will be published soon and can be obtained via iCCYS@icdi.nl, or downloaded from www.iccys.nl
Conference on International Criminal Accountability and the Rights of Children On 24-26 March 2005, ISS, the United Nations University and the Hague Academic Coalition will be holding a joint conference in the annual HAC Conference Series
The full report on the workshop is forthcoming. It will be available on the ISS website and in hardcopy from Loes Keysers at keysers@iss.nl.
Expert Meeting on AIDS On 23 March 2004, Stop Aids Now, Plan Nederland and iCCYS organised an expert meeting on ‘The effects of HIV/AIDS on children’. The meeting was held at the iCCYS/ICDI building in Leiden. Over the past two decades, 20 million people worldwide have died of AIDS. The AIDS pandemic has enormous consequences for children: Africa, for example, has 11 million AIDS orphans. There is, however, limited attention for children within AIDS policies worldwide. The expert meeting was organised to create a better understanding of the Dutch response to the effects of the AIDS pandemic on orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC),
‘From Peace to Justice’. The conference will address broad themes of international justice and accountability, and as a specific focus, the particular needs and rights of children in international justice. Abuses of established international norms highlight the particular vulnerabilities of children. In addition to established norms of human rights in relation to conflict, other forms of child exploitation are increasingly seen as issues that demand to be treated as breaches of international criminal law. Amongst these, the conference will focus on the (sexual) exploitation of children including trafficking in children, the use of children in conflict, and juvenile justice and responsibility. The conference will aim to raise awareness and understanding in support of the needs and rights of children under international law, to strengthen broad-based support for international law in specific issue areas relating to children, and to stimulate capacity development – disseminating experiences in relevant international law to advanced legal students, legal practitioners and public servants. For more information on the conference, please contact Janna van der Meulen, meulen@iss.nl
2 2 / S TA F F N E W S
RESPONSES / 23
Staff News New Staff
Congratulations
Dr Nicholas Awortwi, (postdoc) has been appointed on a two-year contract for the ISS project Capacity Building on Good Governance and Public Administration in Mozambique.
Dr Arjun Bedi has been presented with two prestigious research awards by the Global Development Network.
Prof. Massoud Karshenas has been appointed Professor of Development Economics as of 1 January 2004. Dr Petr Kopecky has been appointed Senior Lecturer in Political Sociology as of 1 January 2004 Dr Jos Mooij has been appointed Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Development Management as of 1 February 2004.
A paper on ‘The Decline in Primary School Enrolment in Kenya’, co-authored with Paul Kimalu, Damiano Kulundu and Nancy Nafula, won the second prize in the GDN worldwide research competition on Pro-market Reform and the Poor. The paper, an output of the ISS-KIPRA project, will be published in the Journal of African Economics. Dr Bedi was awarded First Prize in the GDN research competition on Agriculture Reform and Rural Development for a paper entitled ‘Attending school: two “Rs” and child work in rural Ethiopia’,
co-authored with Assefa Admassie of the University of Addis Ababa. Dr Irene van Staveren has been appointed part-time Professor of Economics and Christian Ethics at the Catholic University of Nijmegen.
Leaving Dr James Busuttil (1 March 2004) to become Director External of the LLM Program, University of London. Dr Paschal Mihyo (per 1 March 2004) to become Director of Research and Programs of the Association of African Universities.
Working Papers ISS Working Papers can be found
ISS Working Papers General Series * ISSN 0921-0201
on the ISS website at: www.iss.nl, Publications/Working Papers.
383
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Eric Ross, Modernisation, clearance and the continuum of violence in Colombia (November 2003) Rachel Kurian, Women workers in a global economy: trends and issues (November 2003) Peter de Valk, How do firms learn? With case studies from LAO PDR. (November 2003) Brigitte M. Holzner and Joop de Wit, Supporting decentralised urban governance: training women municipal councillors in Mumbai, India (December 2003) Assefa Admassie and Arjun Singh Bedi, Attending school: two ‘Rs’ and child work in rural Ethiopia (December 2003 Des Gasper, Human well-being: concepts and conceptualizations (January 2004) Emily Wilkinson, Land titling and local economic development: the missing link? Evidence from two squatter settlements in Lima, Peru (January 2004) Tatiana Feitosa de Britto, Conditional cash transfers: why have they become so prominent in recent poverty reduction strategies in Latin America (January 2004) S. Mansoob Murshed, George Mavrotas, Nicky Pouw et al, Natural resource endowment types and long term growth (February 2004 George Irvin, Is the eurozone headed for economic deflation? (February 2004)
Publications on CYD
International conferences
The staff of ISS, ICDI and iCCYS have produced a wide range of publications and reports in the field of children, youth and development in recent years. You can find a selected list of these publications on the ISS website, at www.iss.nl/Publications/DevISSues.
Due to restricted space in this theme number, we are unable to include the regular agenda for International Conferences and other events. You can find this on the Dev ISSues website at: www.iss.nl/Publications/DevISSues.
Responses to Development ISSues, Volume 5, number 3
Letter to the editors ,
The editors were pleased to receive several responses to the last DevISSues. Unfortunately, in this theme number, there is not enough space to print them in full. Below you can find excerpts from three of the responses: a letter and a comment on Luiduine Zumpolle’s piece on Cuba entitled ‘European Investors Help Keep The Regime In Power’, and an extensive reply to Roel van der Veen’s article on ‘What Went Wrong in Africa’. The full texts are available on the website, and you are invited to respond to them using the new moderated electronic discussion platform.
What Went Wrong In Africa? It Is Partly In The Manner Of Its Birth And Upbringing, Roel van der Veen begins, quite rightly, by criticising the media for the constantly negative and sweeping image of Africa they portray, as a continent of ‘poverty, corruption and conflict’. Regrettably, after a few paragraphs, he also falls into the same trap, providing a sweepin g, descriptive analysis that does not go deep enough. Among the reasons he gives for Africa’s woes are that for too long some African states have been ‘non-functioning’, and that power sometim es rested on ‘a small, Western educated elite’. He also identifies ethnicity and tribalism, endemic conflict, military involvement, the duality of ‘benign’ patronage and ‘malignant’ repression, and, recently, the implosio n or disintegration of some African states. It is true these things have happened, but not in the whole of Africa… These reasons cannot fully explain what went wrong in Africa, or what is wrong today. Most of them are actually symptoms of the real causes of Africa’s misery… My own explanation for the continent’s problems lies partly in the manner of the birth, upbringing and maturing of independent African states. It is naïve to imagine that the euphoria of political independence could, simply by virtue of having a national flag, a national anthem and other paraphernalia of statehood, herald a new era of good democratic governance and economic prosperity. Indeed, ‘miscarriage’ would be a better analogy than ‘birth’ in contemplating African independence. There is no evidence that any of the colonial powers were ready or prepared to give birth to healthy newly independent African states… My personal feelings are that this was not accidental. The lack of serious preparation was intentional to ensure indepen dent African states would remain small, fragile, unstable and beholden to the departing colonial powers… Ombeni Sefue, ISS Alumnus, MA 1980-81, ikulu@eastafrica.net
Liduine Zumpolle’s arti cle highlighted the nee d to support initiatives that promote respect for democracy and human rights in that country… However, in many ‘demo cra tic’ nations democracy has turned into a formality, detach ed from the needs of large groups within the population, where the rich and powerful manoeuvr e to get votes and accum ulate benefits and privileges at the exp ense of the poorest… Cu ba is a small country and doe s not have great wealth . Wit h the revolution it changed from a prostibulo for we alth y Americans to a system that ensures education , employment, health and housing, ma king people better off without having to make others worse off… One can address crit icism at Cuba, as at any nation . Is that the most relevan t thin g that Pax Christi Netherlands can do, while there are so ma ny ‘democratic’ regimes that promote the ‘freedo m’ to industrialise poverty and exploit the natural res ources of other nations at any price, producing wars in the name of justice, using the pre text that in those countr ies there is no democracy and free dom as they promote it? Hector Bonapart/Hilda Habichayn Diploma in National Dev elopment, Master of Social Science s, ISS 1965-1967
A Reply to Liduine Zumpolle, Liduine Zumpolle’s short piece on Cuba deals with none of the real issues and suggests little sympathy for Cuba’s historical experience or current position. She wants a transition to Western-style ‘democracy’, without understanding what that would probably mean. … Zumpolle argues that Europe should exercise its economic influence in Cuba to promote ‘democratic reforms’, US code for re-incorporating Cuba into the world capitalist system. Zumpolle’s chief accusation against Cuba concerns the absence of ‘human rights’, but in a sense promoted in the West. What is missing is any understanding that, if social development is also a ‘right’, then Cubans are among the most privileged citizens in the developing world. Zumpolle’s article ignores Cuba’s many achievements to focus exclusively on one aspect: the treatment of a small number of dissidents. If I have concerns about the fate of the dissidents, I situate them within this broader context. Circumstances have hardly been conducive to producing an ideal society in Cuba, but this makes the achievements even greater. Yet, if Zumpolle has her way and the country is pressured by EU economic interests into emulating Western democracies, such achievements will surely deteriorate as market forces take over. Eric Ross, Senior Lecturer in Population and Development at ISS (ross@iss.nl
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Development and Change The journal Development and Change is published five times a year by Blackwell Publishers (Oxford, UK) on behalf of the Institute of Social Studies. For more information, see the ISS website or email us at d&c@iss.nl. Available online at http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/online
Volume 35 / Number 2 / April 2004 Jean-Philippe Platteau
Monitoring Elite Capture in Community-Driven Development
Susan Johnson
‘Milking the Elephant’: Financial Markets as Real Markets in Kenya
Benedikt Korf
War, Livelihoods and Vulnerability in Sri Lanka
V. Ratna Reddy, M. Gopinatha Reddy, S. Galab et al
Participatory Watershed Development in India: Can it Sustain Rural Livelihoods?
Vasudha Chhotray
The Negation of Politics in Participatory Development Projects, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh
George Niksic
Difficult but not Impossible: The ANC’s Decentralination Strategy in South Africa
Joseph Hanlon
It is Possible to Just Give Money to the Poor?
Volume 35 / Number 3 / June 2004 Craig Johnson
Uncommon Ground: The ‘Poverty of History’ in Common Property Discourse
Amy R. Poteete and Elinor Ostrom
Heterogeneity, Group Size and Collective Action: The Role of Institutions in Forest Management
Janet C. Sturgeon
Border Practices, Boundaries and the Control of Resource Access: A Case from China, Thailand and Burma
M. A. Thomas
Can the World Bank Enforce its Own Conditions?
Rosemary McGee
Constructing Poverty Trends in Uganda: A Multidisciplinary Perspective
Fiona Wilson
Towards a Political Economy of Roads: Experiences from Peru
Economic Globalisation and Institutions of Global Governance: Comments and Debate (I) Louis Emmerij
Labour Mobility, Transfer of Financial Resources and Global Inequalities: Comments on Keith Griffin
Robbie Robertson
The Historical Context and Significance of Globalisation
Servaas Storm and J. Mohan Rao
Market-led Globalisation and World Democracy: Can the Twain Ever Meet?’
Ben Fine
Globalisation or Panglossianisation? A Critical Response to Keith Griffin
James K. Boyce
Democratising Global Economic Governance
Nuesiri Emmanuel
Economic Globalisation and Institutions of Global Governance: A Response to Keith Griffin
Andre Gunder Frank
Global Economy and Institutions of State Governance: A Response to Keith Griffin
Colofon Development ISSues is published three times a year by: Institute of Social Studies PO Box 29776, 2502 LT The Hague, The Netherlands, Tel: +31 (0)70 4260 443 or 4260 419, Fax: + 31 (0)70 4260 799, ISS website: www.iss.nl, Email: DevISSues@iss.nl Editors René Bekius, Andy Brown Editorial Board Karin Arts, Erhard Berner, Kristin Komives, Sandra Nijhof, Peter de Valk, Priscila Camarco Ramalho (Scholas) Editorial assistants Karen Shaw, Marie-Louise Gambon Photos Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are by courtesy of Jager & Krijger Design and Production MUNTZ Marketing Communication Group Circulation: 11,000. Material from Development ISSues may be reproduced or adapted without permission, provided it is not distributed for profit and is attributed to the original author or authors, Development ISSues and the Institute of Social Studies. ISSN: 1566-4821.