Aid

This article outlines one of the activities organised by an international Evangelical faith-based development organisation (FBDO) working in the Kibera informal settlement, an area that attracts large numbers of development practitioners, including FBDOs and Christian missionaries. Some Pentecostal and Evangelical perceptions of entrepreneurship are outlined, which are then related to current theoretical descriptions of the role of global Pentecostalism in improving livelihoods and well-being.

This paper argues that discussion of religion and development sees religion in over-institutionalised ways and is biased towards Christianity over other traditions. It explores this through analysis of the World Bank-sponsored study, Voices of the Poor, and the authors' own research in India. This shows that religious identities and practice can be quite fluid, especially amongst people in lower castes. People identify religion not just in terms of particular affiliations, but in relation to an underlying moral order.

Writing on the relationships between religion and development has blossomed in the last decade or so, after years of relative neglect. Like any field of social enquiry that is both underdeveloped and closely linked to the interests of advocates and practitioners, the work available to date has encountered various pitfalls. These are outlined, to pinpoint the contribution that this special issue makes to the rapidly-evolving body of research on religion in the context of development.

Following the American-led invasion of Iraq, thousands of Iraqis fled to Jordan and the international donor community initiated humanitarian assistance. Through a unique partnership, three organisations conducted participatory research with Iraqi children and their families in Amman. The goal was to understand children's lived experiences – their challenges and coping strategies – with a specific focus on child protection. A better understanding of local context had an immediate, positive impact on organisations and their effectiveness, but long-term change proved elusive.

Drawing on empirical data from a community-based study with children and adults in rural Peru, the paper analyses the everyday experiences of a conditional cash transfer programme, called ‘Juntos’. The findings show that social protection programmes like Juntos address certain child vulnerabilities by making eligibility for their cash transfers conditional on behaviour-related to child protection-related such as health check-ups and school attendance.

This paper discusses protection of children from hazards in agricultural work. International and national policies aim to protect children by eliminating all child labour. Previous literature on hazardous child labour tends to focus on single industries or crops, overlooking the variety of activities that children undertake in subsistence farming. We analyse survey and qualitative data from children, and present rates of work, injuries experienced, how children deal with risks, and perceived benefits of work.

This paper explores how the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) global priorities and strategies for refugee girls and boys are applied in long-term Bhutanese refugee camps in Nepal. It examines UNHCR's interventions to prevent and respond to child protection issues, including separation from parents and caregivers, and early marriage. These are compared with community perceptions of, and assistance for, children living in difficult circumstances.

This paper considers the employment of spatialised practice within child protection efforts as pursued by humanitarian agencies. Starting from a brief overview of the genealogy of enclosure and separation within both humanitarianism and in relation to childhood, examination is then made of spatialisation in the setting of the occupied Palestinian territory. It is argued that in a situation of occupation, the spatialised approach entails numerous problems that are both practical and political in nature.

The full article is available here:

This paper introduces the special issue. It first places the protection of children in the context of development studies. It goes on to outline current international trends in the protection of children and raises questions about them. Finally, it introduces the papers in the issue and highlights how they speak to the questions raised.

The full article is available here:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09614524.2012.672962

The present article follows on from the practical note in Development in Practice 20(7): 879–886 that looked at seven common early lessons learnt from the inclusion of disabled people in World Vision programming work across four countries, based on socially inclusive principles. Externally led evaluations and technical support work undertaken between December 2010 and July 2011 in Armenia, Ethiopia, India, Sierra Leone, and Senegal have yielded seven further common lessons.