Innocenti Working Papers

Like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana is experiencing the impact of the global crisis and the uncertain economic outlook. Indeed, as Ghana’s economy is among the most open in Africa, it is expected that the country has been and will continue to be severely affected by the crisis, although strong export prices of its main exports (gold and cocoa) may at least partially counteract the effects associated with the crisis. The main goal of this paper is to understand the potential impacts of the 2008/9 global crisis on different dimensions of child poverty (monetary, hunger, school participation, child labour and access to health services) in Ghana and to support the policy-maker in designing the most appropriate policy response to counteract the negative effects of the crisis. As timely data are not available, a combined macro-micro economic model to predict the impact of the global crisis on children was developed. Simulations suggest that the financial crisis would increase monetary poverty and hunger across all regions of Ghana, eroding many of the gains made over the past few years. Indeed, in comparison with the year preceding the crisis, instead of a reduction of four percentage points in child monetary poverty in 2011 predicted in the absence of crisis, the simulations indicate a 6.6 percentage point increase, with a continuous increasing pattern over the period of study. The global crisis is also predicted to severely deepen hunger among children, which is simulated to increase up to 6.6 percentage points in 2011 beginning with a sharp increase already in 2009. For both monetary poverty and hunger, the impact of the crisis differs across all regions, with the Eastern, Volta and Greater Accra regions predicted to be the most affected. Children’s participation in schooling and labour, as well as their access to health services, are forecast to be much less affected by the crisis, although it is found to reverse predicted increases in enrolment and health access (with substitution toward more modern types of health services) and forecasted reductions in child labour. Finally, alternative policy options have been simulated: a cash transfer programme targeted to poor children is found to be generally more effective in protecting children than food subsidies. Indeed, with a total budget equivalent to 1% of 2008 GDP, a cash transfer – equivalent to an individual annual amount of 19.8 Cedis – would cut the predicted increase in monetary poverty by over two percentage points in 2011. Although Ghana might be in a position to rapidly implement a cash transfer programme building on the existing Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP) programme, other interventions (or mix of policies) might be more cost-effective in the short run. A combination of a universal or regionally targeted cash transfer programmes for children aged 0 to 5 years old, together with a school-feeding programme in poorer regions, might represent an effective way to intervene quickly to improve child well-being.

Burkina Faso‟s hard earned economic gains in recent years have been eroded by the 2008-09 world financial and economic crisis. The country will particularly feel the effects of the world economic crisis due to its close links with the world economy. Most of the adverse effects are transmitted to households then passed onto children. The situation of children principally depends on the monetary and non-monetary wellbeing of their household. This, together with their greater vulnerability, means that children are at risk of suffering more, and for longer, from the impacts of the crisis. It is therefore crucial to understand and anticipate the effects that the crisis may have on children in Burkina Faso and to propose options for social protection to counter these effects. To this end, we propose a macro-micro economic approach. Macro-micro economic analysis uses a general calculable equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate the impacts of various transmission channels of the crisis to the Burkinabe economy. The results of these simulations are then used for the micro-econometric analysis, which integrates individual and household economic behaviour to evaluate the impact of the crisis on child welfare. According to our simulations, which run from 2009 to 2011, the financial crisis respectively leads to 5 and 1 percentage point increases in the incidence of monetary and caloric poverty among Burkinabe children. Moreover, the school enrolment rate for children will decline by about 0.7 percentage points due to the crisis, while the child labour rate will increase by about 1 percentage point. Finally, a 1 percentage point decrease in the medical consultation rate among children is expected, along with substitution from modern health services to traditional medicine. Large regional and rural vs. urban gaps are also noted. A monetary transfer policy targeting poor children appears to be the most effective at reversing the negative effects of the crisis and returning to the trend that would have existed without the crisis. Such a policy, financed by external aid and with a budget of 1% of GDP, re-establishes the trend that monetary poverty would have followed in the absence of a crisis and even leads to a reduction in hunger. It also limits the crisis‟ adverse effects on school enrolment, child labour and sick children‟s access to modern health care services. A universal (non-targeted) variant of this transfer policy for 0-5 year-olds has similar results and is easier to enact. Policies which subsidize food and cereals, as well as monetary transfer policies for the Centre and Mouhoun regions (the areas most affected by the August-September 2009 floods) were also analyzed.

The current global financial and economic crisis, which exacerbates the impacts of the energy and food crises that immediately preceded it, has spread to the developing countries endangering recent gains in terms of economic growth and poverty reduction. The effects of the crisis are likely to vary substantially between countries and between individuals within the same country. Children are among the most vulnerable population, particularly in a period of crisis. Especially in least developed countries, where social safety nets programmes are missing or performing poorly and public fiscal space is extremely limited, households with few economic opportunities are at a higher risk of falling into (monetary) poverty, suffering from hunger, removing children from school and into work, and losing access to health services. This study simulates the impacts of the global economic crisis and alternative policy responses on different dimensions of child welfare in Western and Central Africa (WCA) over the period 2009-2011. It is based on country studies for Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Ghana, which broadly represent the diversity of economic conditions in WCA countries. In order to capture the complex macro-economic effects of the crisis and the various policy responses – on trade, investment, remittances, aid flows, goods and factor markets – and to then trace their consequences in terms of child welfare – monetary poverty, hunger (caloric poverty), school participation, child labour, and access to health services – a combination of macro- and micro-analysis was adopted. The simulations suggest that the strongest effects are registered in terms of monetary poverty and hunger, although large differences between countries emerge. More moderate impacts are predicted in terms of school participation, child labour, and access to health care, although these are still significant and require urgent policy responses. Specifically, Ghana is the country where children are predicted to suffer the most in terms of monetary poverty and hunger, while Burkina Faso is where the largest deteriorations in schooling, child labour and access to health services are simulated. Among the policy responses examined to counteract the negative effects of the crisis on child wellbeing, a targeted cash transfer to predicted poor children is by far the most effective programme. A comparison between a universal and targeted approach is also presented.

This paper provides an overview of research findings, legislation, policy and programme responses to prevent and respond to the sexual abuse and exploitation of boys in South Asia. The background to the paper is based on the findings from previously conducted UNICEF IRC research on child trafficking in the region, in which it was indicated that boys enjoy less legal protection than girls from sexual abuse and exploitation and less access to service for victims. While it is seen that the majority of legislation and policies that address ‘children’ adequately address ‘boys’, this paper notes areas in which the rights and needs of boys require greater focus. Among the concerns is the absence of legal commentary on legislation regarding boys’ issues and an absence of advocacy efforts to take action and amend laws to provide equal protection to boys. In some cases legislation covers only girls and women. And, although research shows that boys face nearly the same degree of sexual abuse and exploitation as girls, programming throughout the region is overwhelmingly directed at girls and women. Evidence-based information is lacking on the sexual abuse of both boys and girls and on the sexual exploitation of boys. The majority of studies to date have emphasized trafficking for sexual exploitation and have been focused on women and girls. Research on trafficking has concentrated on recruitment, transportation and sale of victims; little research has been conducted on the subsequent situations of exploitation into which children are trafficked. Some countries in South Asia are beginning to fill the knowledge gap regarding both child sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of boys. The information that is presented was mainly gathered in 2008, but it remains limited by the sources available, some of which date back several years previously. The findings are however considered to be relatively robust and consistent. The report presents concrete recommendations for strengthening legislation, policy and programmes to address this issue from a child rights based approach. It highlights that listening to boys and girls and learning from their experiences and recommendations are key to designing and implementing effective preventive and protective mechanisms.

Since 2006, Mali has experienced the full effects of the global food crisis, with price increases of up to 67%. This study presents simulations of the impacts of this crisis and a number of policy responses with respect to the welfare of children. The impacts are analyzed in terms of monetary (food) poverty, nutrition, education, child labor and access to health services of children. According to simulations, food poverty among children would have increased from 41% to 51%, with a corresponding rise in caloric insufficiency from 32% to 40%, while the impacts on school participation, work and access to health services would have been relatively weak. To prepare an adequate response, the government should start by identifying the poor individuals who are to be protected, based on a limited number of easily observed sociodemographic characteristics. A method of targeting these individuals is proposed in this study. However, simulations show that with targeting about one quarter of poor children would be erroneously excluded (under-coverage), while more than a third of non-poor children would be erroneously included (leakage). These identification errors, which increase in proportion with the extremity of poverty, reduce the impact and increase the cost of any public interventions. That having been said, it is important to note that leakage to the non-poor can nonetheless improve the conditions of children in terms of caloric intake, school participation, child labour and access to health services, none of which are exclusive to poor children. When targeting children or sub-groups of children by age, benefits will likely be deflected to some extent to other family members. Moreover, it is total household income, regardless of the member targeted, that determines decisions relating to child work, education or access to health services. School feeding programmes are found to be a particularly efficient policy in that they concentrate public funds exclusively on the consumption of highly nutritious foods, while cash transfers can be used by households for other purposes. Moreover, school feeding programmes are likely to have desirable effects on school participation and child labour. However, there are some caveats due to the fact that these programmes exclude children who do not attend school, the difficulty of exclusively targeting poor children and the possibility that child food rations at home will be proportionally reduced.

After two decades of transition the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States face an increasingly diverse mix of old and new policy challenges to improving child well-being and realizing children‟s rights. While attempts have been made to reflect these challenges and diversities by constructing indices of child wellbeing, which measure and rank overall performance by individual countries, this paper proposes a simplified approach which examines five different dimensions of child wellbeing separately, using several indicators for each dimension which allow cross-country comparison. The dimensions included in the analysis are income, health, education, housing and deprivation of parental up-bringing. The results highlight a divergence of child well-being priorities in the selected dimensions for the different countries and for different age groups of children. The analysis shows that in the 2000-2008 period the situation of children improved in absolute terms in almost all dimensions in all countries, but that government interventions still face difficulties in reaching all children, and that across the region there are increasing differences in the character of problems facing the more vulnerable sections of the child population. The discussion shows that it is difficult to rank countries according to an overall level of child well-being, since performance varies significantly according to the choice of dimension or indicator considered. An overall index cannot therefore capture the open challenges, and indeed may distract policy attention away from them. The approach used in this paper shows that each country faces challenges which can be tackled only if they are monitored and fully understood with clear and meaningful indicators, analyzed individually and in their interaction.

There were 1.5 million documented foreigners living in Switzerland in 2000. This represented 20 per cent of the resident population, which is one of the highest shares of foreign residents within any country in Europe. Switzerland may be described as a country of immigrants because of significant inflows: of the resident population aged 15 and above, 23 per cent are foreign born. At the 2000 census, of the 1,442,000 children 0 to 17 years of age living in families in Switzerland, approximately 39 per cent (559,000) were members of families of foreign origin with at least one foreign-born parent. The countries of origin of 52 per cent of these families were outside the European Union. The 2000 census enumerated 350,000 children resident in Switzerland who were foreign citizens.

According to 2001 Census data more than 900,000 children aged 0–17, 10 per cent of all children in Italy, were born abroad or had at least one parent who was born abroad. One or both of the parents of about 500,000 children in immigrant families were born in less developed countries. Children now account for almost 23 per cent of the foreign population. In this report, we have analysed household composition and wellbeing of children in immigrant families with 2001 Italian Census data and 2006 survey data. Inclusion and other social issues are reviewed through the most recent literature.

In 2005, 4.9 million immigrants were residing in metropolitan France. This was 8.1 per cent of the population. Children of immigrants represent close to one fifth of all children. Children with at least one parent from Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia make up almost 40 per cent of these children, and children of sub-Saharan African origin make up one eighth. Of the 3.5 million foreigners living in France in 2004, 450,000 were children 0–17 whose parents were foreign born.

This paper adds a perspective to existing research on child protection by engaging in a debate on intersectional discrimination and its relationship to child protection. The paper has a twofold objective, (1) to further establish intersectionality as a concept to address discrimination against children, and (2) to illustrate the importance of addressing intersectionality within rights-based programmes of child protection. First, the paper applies the concept of intersectionality within a children‟s context. Intersectionality and intersectional discrimination are concepts used to describe the situation where multiple grounds of discrimination operate at the same time, for example when Romani girls experience harassment and abuse on the basis of their gender and ethnic origin in combination. Using the example of Romani children, the paper sheds light on the complex ways in which children are denied the equal enjoyment of their rights and freedoms because of discrimination against them on the basis of their age in combination with gender, ethnicity, disability, national status, economic status and other grounds. The analysis illustrates how intersectional discrimination takes various forms, such as discrimination within laws and policies or by state authorities (structural intersectionality), and discrimination in political and public forums for participation (political and representational intersectionality). These forms of discrimination can be intentional or unintentional in character, the latter resulting when an apparently neutral provision or practice is discriminatory in its effects. The analysis further distinguishes between the external sphere (state and society) and the internal sphere (family and community) where children experience interrelated forms of discrimination, and shows how this increases the disempowerment of the child. It is argued that in order to protect the human dignity of all children on an equal footing, existing human rights law must be interpreted and assessed in a way that cuts across traditionally separated legal categories. Furthermore, in order to fully address violations against the rights of the child, legal provisions are necessary that directly target intersectional discrimination. Secondly, a concrete illustration is presented of addressing intersectionality within programmes for child protection, using the example of rights-based programming to prevent and respond to child trafficking. Through a focus on the impact that discrimination has on children‟s rights, the importance is underlined of giving systematic and comprehensive attention to children‟s vulnerability to intersectional discrimination within anti-trafficking programming. The analysis shows that Romani children, and many other children who experience discrimination on interrelated grounds, have difficulties in accessing their entitlements to a broad range of human rights. These include legal guarantees and procedural rights, information, education, participation, health and social assistance, and identity rights. Consequently these children‟s access to anti-trafficking measures is affected, since the prevention of child trafficking, and protection and empowerment of children, essentially depend upon the enacting of these key child rights. Furthermore, when anti-trafficking measures do not take issues of intersectionality into account they may unintentionally reproduce the exclusion of those children who are vulnerable to intersectional discrimination. On this basis, the paper highlights areas where intersectional discrimination can be addressed within programming against child-trafficking in order to ensure the full and equal protection of all children. The recommendations hold relevance for child protection programming more widely. The main recommendation is to adopt holistic intersectional approaches within the international field of human rights. This requires comprehensive research and the systematic collection of data on which children are vulnerable to such forms of discrimination and in which sectors it occurs. Research should be conducted with children to get a nuanced insight into these issues, and to better understand children‟s reality. A holistic intersectional approach also includes identification of good practices and capacity building of professionals and institutions involved in child protection on diversity and discrimination issues. This includes establishing forums for dialogue to target discriminatory practices in society, including among children themselves, so that children do not reproduce discriminatory attitudes dominant in society. At the same time, children and adolescents who experience discrimination on interrelated grounds, namely intersectional discrimination, should be consulted and involved in developing policies and programmes that address discrimination It is important to interpret traditionally separated areas of human rights law in closer relation to each other, as well as to develop new legal provisions and political commitments that directly target intersectional discrimination. The concepts of structural, political and representational intersectionality and internal/external intersectionalities serve in this paper to distinguish between the different forms of discrimination affecting children and thus to identify the particular measures needed to address these issues.