Empower and protect – a better approach to child work
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍To be an Afghan child worker in IranMore than a million Afghan children are trying to make their way in Iran. What could smooth the path for them?
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Child labour: a shock absorber for economic precarityThe only way to reduce child labour in low-income countries is to make it easier for households to survive without it
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Banning child labour jeopardises working children’s right to surviveTrying to ‘eliminate’ child labour only pushes working children into the shadows
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍My childhood as a child worker in MalawiOur author wouldn’t be where he is today if bans on child labour had prevented him from working when he needed to
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Are adults willing to listen to children on child labour?Working children have the right to policies informed by their views and best interests
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Working children claim their rights in CameroonSociety rarely respects child workers, but what happens when they demand it?
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Time to recognise the rights of child workersChild workers have many, at times conflicting rights. Practitioners seeking to intervene must honour them all
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Analysis👍The dangerous lives of Dhaka’s child leather workersMaking leather is hard and dirty work, but should children in Bangladesh be banned from it?
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Is school the solution to child labour? Not everywhere, and not for all childrenAsk children in West Africa why they work, and many will say ‘to get an education’. That should make you pause.
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍I am a child worker. Hear meChild workers in India have been suffering under the pandemic. Let them tell you what could help them cope
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Where is the solidarity for working girls?Working girls in Peru are doing their best to look after themselves. Will adults support them?
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍What’s wrong with the Global Estimates on Child Labour?Big numbers make headlines, but they must also be treated with extreme caution
The violent, hopeful world of children who smuggle people
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍The violent, hopeful world of children who smuggle peopleOn the US-Mexico border, smuggling offers children a risky way to support their families in times of need
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Smuggling people into the United States, 'you risk a lot'This teenager smuggled people across the U.S.-Mexico border, but the death of a friend made him think again
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Crossing the US-Mexico border, just to seeCrossing the US-Mexico border is a lifeline for some. For others, it’s an adventure
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Searching for hope in a smuggling townMelly has spent her life assembling goods on the Mexican border. Will her son find a way out, or will he suffer as she has?
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍'People will always find a way to get through': the children who work in smugglingWith few ways to earn income on the border, many young men turn to the dangerous but well-paid work of people smuggling
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Work and motherhood amidst the border violenceMultiple tragedies haven't stopped this teen mother from forging a new life for her family on the US-Mexico border
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍To be the mother of smugglers: 'People judge children like my sons'Caught between poverty and stigma, smuggling is one of the few jobs available for María's sons. And she's already...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Hope lies on the other side of the borderSome children will go to great lengths to try to help their families
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍'Only those we forget die': Losing a brother to smuggling gangsRodrigo used to smuggle people. Now he dreams of a life far from violence and poverty
Child workers in Ghana speak: will anybody listen?
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Child workers speak: will anybody listen?Child labour can’t be abolished through force. To address it, we must attend to why children work in the first place
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Why do children work? ‘We will not have food to eat’When children work to survive, who can demand they stop?
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍‘They steal our children and beat their parents’: a story of anti-trafficking in GhanaThis community in Ghana says NGOs are taking children away from their families in the name of anti-trafficking
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Why do children work? ‘To attain my future’Many say that working children should be in school. But for many children, work is what gets them an education
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Taken in the name of ‘rescue’: a child respondsGhanaian children are being wrenched from their parents and put into care homes to ‘save’ them from work
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Why do children work? ‘We have no helper in this world’Inequality is at the core of child labour, so why isn’t redistribution seen as the solution?
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍The home economics of child labourYou can't stop child labour without confronting household poverty
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Why do children work? ‘To become big men and women’Schools are assumed to be the path to success, but what if the schools are bad, cruel, or don’t exist?
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery: Feature👍Why do children work? ‘To learn a trade’Many children see vocational training, not formal schooling, as the way to escape back-breaking work
The many faces of child work
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍The impact of COVID-19 on working children in Buenos AiresThe pandemic has made work for many children more important that ever.
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Child workers need rights, not policing, to weather the pandemicThe development community wants to help child workers during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, but unless it rethinks...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Open letter: change course on the International Year for the Elimination of Child LabourChild labour will not end in 2021, and trying to eliminate it will only endanger working children further. Over 100...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Listening to working children is a legal obligation – not a choiceIf the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour truly seeks to help working children then policymakers...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Trust in our own strength: the African Movement of Working Children and Youth in SenegalThe working children of Senegal have long organised to educate, support, and protect one another from the everyday...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Underage human smugglers: the story behind Mexico’s “circuit children”Activists and social workers in Juarez are working to understand underage participation in human smuggling and...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Modern slavery, child trafficking, and the rise of West African football academiesGhanaian football academies have been accused of exploiting talent and promoting trafficking in search of profit,...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Saving the ‘girl child’: the politics of sexual purity and national honourRepresentations of girls often place a premium on sexual purity and sexual violation, and nation-states are either...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Supporting working children as social, political, and economic agentsPeru’s movement of working children offers a visionary model for collaborative, caring, and egalitarian communities...
E-BOOK
Childhood and Youth
Neil Howard and Sam Okyere
Jason Hart
Kristen E. Cheney
Karen Wells
Roy Huijsmans
Thea De Gruchy, Jo Vearey, and Marlise Richter
Michael Bourdillon
William Myers
Jo Boyden and Gina Crivello
Amanda Berlan
Hugh Cunningham
Mike Dottridge
Iman Hashim
Tanja Bastia
Karen Heissler
Treena Orchard
Viviene Cree
Brenda Oude Breuil
This volume, replete with contributions from world-renowned children’s rights academics and practitioners, argues that the current drive to eliminate all forms of child work often goes against the best interests and rights of the children supposedly being 'protected'.
This happens because what is proposed is politically disengaged, fails to tackle the underlying causes of children’s insecurities, and lacks a thorough understanding of the social, cultural, and economic circumstances surrounding young people’s work.
Combined, the authors featured in this book advocate for an approach to securing child and youth welfare that is more nuanced, context specific, non-dogmatic, politically engaged, and takes young people’s own accounts seriously.
Childhood and Youth is part of the BTS Short Course, an eight-volume set of primers designed to introduce new readers to all the major aspects of the critical discussion on human trafficking and modern slavery.
The wilful deafness of the international system
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Open letter from working children to the UN Committee on the Rights of the ChildAfter being excluded from the IV Global Conference on the Eradication of Child Labour, working children and...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Open letter: on the lives of street childrenAs a UN committee continues to draft a 'general comment on the rights of adolescents', academics working with street...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍The La Paz DeclarationFor the global defence of the dignity and well-being of children and adolescents who work. Español
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍What’s wrong with the World Day Against Child Labour?Working children everywhere reject the mainstream anti-child labour paradigm. A major new video campaign tells us why.
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Can campaigns to stop child labour be stopped?Working children’s organisations have had limited success in challenging dominant abolitionist perspectives on child...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍A tale of two conferences: exploring the politics of global child labour policiesTwo international conferences on child labour were held in South America this fall. In one working children...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍Saving the children with songs and light refreshmentsIf the conversation at the ILO's ‘high level panel discussion on child labour’ had lived up to its name the world...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and SlaveryBureaucratic dysfunction in child labourThe ILO, UNICEF, and the Committee on the Rights of the Child promote policies known to harm children. What will...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and Slavery👍What we want for children in the global compacts on refugees and migrantsWe expect the impact of the initiative to carry beyond the global compacts and to influence the way all children on...
In conversation with Human Rights Watch
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and SlaveryA better approach to child work - IAs the UN considers its position on child labour, 59 experts lay out the case against a universal minimum age....
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and SlaveryA Response to HRW's letter on international minimum-age standardsAs the UN considers its position on child labour, a group of academics and practitioners have engaged in open debate...
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Published in:Beyond Trafficking and SlaveryA better approach to child work - IIAs the UN considers its position on child labour, a global group of experts lay out the case against a universal...