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The Undefended Childhood in a Global Context
The Undefended Childhood in a Global Context: Structural Challenges to Schooling, Health and Well Being Among the World’s Children Project is a multi-disciplinary thematic focus which emphasizes issues that cut across many areas of challenged child development and extreme life circumstances among the world’s children. This project takes the approach of acknowledging the children of the world by looking at the complex societal and interrelated factors that impacts a child's ability to obtain the most fundamental rights---the right to be educated, to be safe and healthy.
From a global child rights perspective, this project presents the following aspects of individual rights that are imperative to a child’s well-being and development as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948:
* Security rights include the rights to be free from torture, execution, and imprisonment, or rights related to the integrity of the person. This set of rights is especially important in light of the frequency of allegations of torture and mistreatment of indigenous and minority children in child labor situations and children residing in refugee camps in various parts of the world.
* Subsistence rights are those rights related to the fulfilment of basic human needs (e.g. water, food, shelter, and access to health assistance, health education, education and medicines). A major focus of concern of children who lost their parents to HIV/AIDS is the access that these children have to livelihood support systems from governments. For those children who have HIV/AIDS, access to antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) is crucial. In Malawi alone, there are a million orphans, some of them with HIV/AIDS.
* Development rights are those rights that individuals have to work for fair wages and participate in development programs that are aimed at raising living standards and improving the quality of life of individuals. The child labor movement, aimed in part at reducing the number of children involved in hazardous and difficult work, is beginning to make headway in various parts of the world. Nevertheless, there are still millions of children who are working in complex circumstances ranging from rug weaving in Pakistan and match making in India to agricultural field labor in Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States. In fact, children were even found working in the vicinity of a refugee camp, at Osire in Namibia in 2001, collecting firewood and processing wild medicinal plants for traditional healers and others.
Emphasis will be placed on children in the international categories outlined by the UDHR representing the following global categories: (1) refugee children, (2) children with HIV/AIDS, and (3) internally displaced children due to state policies on development-related resettlement, but also on contexts and topics generally involving issues of vulnerable children (i.e. child labor, child education, indigenous education, indigenous childrens rights, world health, children in conflict, poverty, language, well-being).
This project is sponsored by the Global and Area Thematic Initiative (GATI) at Michigan State University. Funding for GATI is provided by the U.S. Department of Education through MSU’s Title VI-funded National Resource Centers including: the African Studies Center, Asian Studies Center, Center for Advanced Study of International Development, and Women and International Development Program (WID) as well as the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Office of the Dean of International Studies and Programs with support from the Office of the Provost.
We want to express special Acknowledgement for their sponsorship to School of Social Work, Anthropology, and Family and Child Ecology at Michigan State University.
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Logo: "Family" by Dr. Helen Milroy
(Associate Professor and Director for the Centre for Aboriginal Medical and Dental Health (CAMDH) at University of Western Australia)
Family: Children are a gift, born from country into a family, ancestry and culture as enduring as the universe. Connected for eternity through love, life and spirit.