Children's work

There are two distinct meanings of the term 'child labour', which are often confused: 'child labour' as work that is in some way harmful, and 'child labour' as work or employment below a standardized minimum age.  The latter may have economic and psycho-social benefits for children, especially for children connected to city streets from a very young age. These can contribute to livelihood while young; so our focus should be on benefits and harm rather than on age. Our focus should be on supporting and protecting children in their work, to ensure that they benefit from it, rather than trying to stop them from working.

This paper is a preliminary report on a sociolinguistic field survey. It records the beliefs which 834 permanent residents of Suva, Fiji had about their own language and literacy skills in 1988-89. The interview subjects were selected from five census enumeration districts with populations ranging from 430 to 1200, and chosen for having a roughly equal ethnic composition of Fijians and Indo-Fijians. Bilingual interviewers (linguistics students) invited and assisted subjects to complete an extensive questionnaire, and offer unstructured comments. The collated and analysed outcome gives a complex and sometimes surprising picture of urban language change.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perception of visually impaired students, their peers without disabilities,
and teachers about inclusive education, focusing on a second cycle educational institution in the Eastern region of Ghana
implementing inclusive education for the visually impaired. In this study, we collected data from 23 visually impaired students,
27 students without disabilities, and 19 teachers in the inclusive school. Data were collected through semistructured in-depth
interviews. This study followed a phenomenological approach, reporting findings from participants’ own words. The study
findings revealed that visually impaired students and some teachers supported inclusion while a number of students without
disabilities disliked the practice. Some teachers indicated that the idea of inclusive education is a good way to ensure equal
educational opportunities. The study concludes that Ghanaian teachers in inclusive schools should be equipped with training
to teach students with disabilities.

Artigo publicado no Portal de Jornalismo Independente "Outros 400" sobre a temática envolvendo o caso do deputado Luiz Sefer, descortinando as implicações que existem por trás de uma prática complexa e naturalizada na região amazônica: a circulação de meninas do interior do estado para serem "crias - de família" na capital. Link para acesso < http://www.outros400.com.br/urubuservando/4201>

En la actualidad millones de menores de edad participan en el mercado laboral mexicano, tanto en el campo como en la ciudad, lo que en muchos casos provoca altas tasas de deserción escolar. Existe consenso en que el trabajo infantil debe prevenirse y erradicarse. Hoy el trabajo infantil se concibe como una forma de abuso sobre la infancia y una actividad propia de la vida adulta; a un niño que trabaja se le describe como un individuo que ha "perdido" o al que le han "robado" su niñez. Es un lugar común pensar que el lugar de los niños debe ser, por antonomasia, la escuela y que el trabajo infantil es un obstáculo a la escolarización.1

The first part of this work initially deals with an historical itinerary in human rights’ development, as well as in girl child rights. Then, it continues by an analysis of the international legal standards to safeguard children’s rights from worst forms of child labour and hazardous works.
In its second part, this study tackles the phenomenon of child domestic work, focusing on gender issues, by a perspective of qualitative analysis and of applied anthropology. The analysed situation of exploited girl children, in the domestic work of third-party homes, highlights crosscutting aspects of cultural, gender and poverty issues. In this part of the work, a theoretical reflection on gender, asymmetries and discrimination is followed by the outcomes of author’s previous ethnographic field works, with marginalised children and adolescents, in the Caribbean area. Recent outcomes from international research, by the United Nations and the international organisations environment, on these subjects, are also provided. By doing this, the author wishes to join the peculiar contributions of the anthropological discipline and its ethnographic methodology for in-depth research of cultural local meanings, also including harmful stereotypes and discriminating attitudes, with the framework of the international legal standards for fundamental children’s rights and of their implementation, at local level. This contribution concludes by outlining a proposal for a transdisciplinary interaction between these two disciplinary fields, for an anthropology of/for children’s rights, under the overall consideration that a real sustainable development for future generations cannot avoid or disregard the fulfilment of children’s rights.

Keywords: children’s rights, girl child rights, gender, child domestic work, marginalised children.

Rural Ethiopian children, and members of their households, often suffer from common and preventable but debilitating illnesses, such as malaria, parasite infection and worms. Enrolment rates in Ethiopia are high, but school attendance is patchy, children often drop out of school (although they sometimes return), and grade repetition is common. This paper argues that the two phenomena are related: serious illness of children or in children’s households constitutes a major, under-analysed and preventable barrier to children's schooling participation. This was demonstrated both in quantitative research, which analysed a 633-child longitudinal sample across 13 rural sites in Ethiopia, and qualitative research, a village case study, including interviews with 24 children and ten caregivers.

The origins of Agenda 2063 lie in the Golden Jubilee of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) now the African Union (AU). The AU summit tasked the African Union Commission (AUC), supported but the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to prepare a 50-year continental agenda. This was to be achieved through an extensive consultative process involving a series of meetings across the continent with stakeholders spanning many areas of African society including youth, women, civil society organisations, the diaspora, African think tanks and research institutes, planners, the private sector, religious organisations, the Forum for Former African Heads of State and others. This gave rise to the Aspirations of the African People, the driver of Agenda 2063. 3 As Lélé first noted back in 1991, it has become something of a 'metafix' "that will unite everybody from the profit-minded industrialist and risk minimising subsistence farmer to the equity-seeking social worker, the pollution concerned or wild-lifer loving First Worlder, the growth-minimising policy maker, the goal-oriented bureaucrat, and therefore, the votecounting politician" (Lélé 1991, p. 613). 9 The authors explain that by 'flows' they refer to "the movements of physical artefacts, people, symbols, tokens and information across space and time', whilst 'networks' is used to refer to 'regularized or patterned interactions between independent agents, nodes of activity, or sites of power" (Held et al. 1999, p. 16). 43 Usage of the term can be dated back to Nelson Mandela's (1994) speech to the OAU summit in Tunis in which he spoke of the vision of an African Renaissance following on the liberation of South Africa. It is Thabo Mbeki, however, who is most credited with articulating and developing the concept in the form of a call to action for Africans at the turn of the new millennium. Subsequently, the term has become a point of reference for politicians in Africa, has spawned a number of conferences and led to the establishment of the African Renaissance Institute in Tshwana (formerly Pretoria).