Articles

Child protection has focused on responding to interpersonal violence and abuse. This approach can detach children from the broader socio-economic and political structures which shape their life chances, by concentrating on the symptoms of risk rather than the underlying causes. Drawing on the Young Lives study of childhood poverty, this paper argues that poverty and inequalities are at the heart of childhood risk, shaping which children are at risk and access to sources of protection and therefore to children's life chances.

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.

‘Orphans’ became a category of vulnerable children deserving special protection in the context of the global AIDS epidemic, and currently the notion of ‘orphans and vulnerable children’ (OVC), dominates much of the policy for protecting children across sub-Saharan Africa.

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 article explores divergent perspectives on female early marriage and genital modification in Ethiopia. It contrasts international norms and research evidence with local understandings, the latter focusing on the part these practices play in securing family social heritage, well-being of girls, and their transition to adulthood. The article explains the persistence of these practices in the face of campaigns to eliminate them and questions assumptions behind the international child protection model.

Drawing on empirical data from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Bangladesh, this paper examines intra-household relations, and the roles and responsibilities of children in this context. The findings offer several contributions to current debates and approaches in child protection. First, there is a need for greater recognition of intergenerational interdependence both within households among children and their parents, and outside among wider networks in the community. Second, children's work is revealed as having a protective function within these relationships.

This paper explores how an ostensibly child-centred system can fail to protect children. In some policy arenas, the Kenyan state is recognised as a leader in Africa for the care and protection of children at risk. Yet a case study of children's experiences illuminates how, despite adherence to a legislated framework and series of protocols, the Kenyan state proves unable or unwilling to ensure children's care and protection.

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.

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This paper critically examines policy in Benin against child trafficking. Drawing on interviews and participant observation with adolescent labour migrants and their communities, it problematises both the assumptions underpinning anti-trafficking policy and the appropriateness of the initiatives that comprise it.

This paper examines Congolese children's experiences of war and displacement in the context of the material, social, and relational aspects of their lives in Dar es Salaam. It argues that the challenges, privations and indignities of daily life in urban Tanzania were characterised by feelings of loss, deprivation and hardship so intense they were felt by many to be as or more devastating in their brutality than was life in the midst of war.