The State and the world’s children

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Article

Reference

The State and the world's children

HANSON, Karl

HANSON, Karl. The State and the world's children. Childhood , 2021, vol. 28, no. 1, p. 3-7

DOI : 10.1177/0907568220981494

Available at:

http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:150502

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https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568220981494 Childhood 2021, Vol. 28(1) 3 –7

sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/0907568220981494 journals.sagepub.com/home/chd

The State and the world’s children

The State of the World’s Children is the title of UNICEF reports that have been published and widely distributed since 1980 about children and young people across the globe.

Whilst it is not specified who makes up ‘the world’s children’, the term bears direct reference to what has also been discussed as global childhood. Each report puts special empha- sis on one central theme, for instance food and nutrition, the digital world, children with disabilities, child participation or gender equality, and also includes detailed statistical tables on demographics, child health, education, child protection, social protection and economic development.¹ The term State in the title of the report refers to children’s general condition or situation; but the word can also signify a nation or a territory under the same government, such as Ghana, Thailand or Italy. Here we will use the latter meaning of State to discuss the tenacity of national sovereignty for childhood and youth policies.

Who is responsible for the rights and well-being of the world’s children? In their mission statements, many international non-governmental organisations present themselves as the champions who promote and secure children’s rights all over the globe. Humanium, a small NGO with branches in Switzerland, France and Germany that runs projects on children’s rights in 12 countries illustrates the global ambitions of many of these actors.

The main goal of the organisation, that in 2019 announced a budget of approximately 350,000 US Dollars, is the well-being of children and the ending of violations of children’s rights throughout the world.² To raise awareness and educate on children’s rights, the organisation has created a ‘Map on the Respect of Children’s Rights Worldwide’ that rates a country’s progress in implementing children’s rights. Following this assessment, the countries on the map are coloured in green (good situation), yellow (satisfactory situation), orange (noticeable problems), red (difficult situation) and black (very serious situation). The wonder is not so much the outcome of this exercise – there is indeed little surprise that a humanitarian organisation based in the global North colours most of the countries on the African continent black or red, and uses green or yellow for the countries in Europe and North America – but the enormous ambition of this small-scale NGO. Why would they be responsible for stopping children’s rights violations everywhere and not just in their own locations? And how on earth can the well-being of children worldwide be secured with such a small budget? But maybe we should consider the work of much larger organisations. Take for instance World Vision (which has the world in its name), a global Christian humanitarian organisation that is involved in community-based development, emergency relief and the promotion of justice focusing on the sustained well-being of children, especially the most vulnerable.³ World Vision has an annual operating revenue of almost 3 billion US Dollars, manages programmes that deal with children’s health, Editorial

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4 Childhood 28(1) education, faith and community development, care, protection and participation. Relying on more than 37,000 staff members, the NGO deploys its activities in nearly 100 countries, serving over 100 million vulnerable children and their families. Another large humanitarian organisation, Save the Children, presents itself in relatively similar terms as an advocate for the rights and interests of children worldwide, putting the most vulnerable children first.⁴ It reports disposing of an annual revenue of about 2.2 billion US Dollars, a budget that in 2019 allowed the organisation’s 25,000 staff members to respond to major emergencies, influence children’s rights legislation and policy and reach over 38.7 million children in 117 countries around the world. However, notwithstanding these impressive numbers, it is difficult to see how the budgets and staff members of all children’s rights organisations combined could one day be in a position to address the well-being of all the world’s 2.3 billion children and young people under 18. Advocacy and service delivering NGOs such as Humanium, World Vision or Save the Children do not have the resources to make children’s rights a reality for all the world’s children. Also, even if they are major contributors to implementing the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), civil society actors cannot, under the current international legal regime, be held accountable for children’s well-being or rights in countries where they deploy no activities and that colour black or red on Humanium’s map.

To achieve global justice for children, we might turn to UNICEF that publishes every year The State of the World’s Children, which we mentioned before. On its website, UNICEF outlines its ambition to defending children’s rights and safeguarding their lives and futures across the globe, by working

‘in the world’s toughest places to reach the most disadvantaged children and adolescents – and to protect the rights of every child, everywhere. Across more than 190 countries and territories, we do whatever it takes to help children survive, thrive and fulfil their potential, from early childhood through adolescence’.⁵

To fulfil its mission, UNICEF disposes of an annual budget amounting to approximately 5.5–6 billion US Dollars, which is roughly similar to the sum of the revenues of Humanium, Save the Children and World Vision. UNICEF is funded voluntarily with two main sources of revenue, governmental and private. Two-thirds come from governments and one-third from the private sector, the latter through the fundraising of the 36 national Committees for UNICEF based in industrialised countries and that are instituted as independent local NGOs.

Established through the adoption of a series of Resolutions by the United Nations General Assembly in the mid-20th century (United Nations, 1946, 1950, 1953), UNICEF was initially founded immediately after World War II as an International Children’s Emergency Fund to be utilized ‘for the benefit of children and adolescents of countries which were victims of aggression’ (1946). The necessity for action to relieve the suffer- ings of children that had been subjected to the devastation of war was reaffirmed in 1950 and extended to address other calamities and to include programmes outside of Europe, in particular to strengthen child health and child welfare programmes of under-developed countries receiving assistance. The relevance of the organisation was reaffirmed in 1953, which was also when it obtained a permanent character, and the name of the organisation was changed into the United Nations Children’s Fund but retaining the symbol UNICEF.

The Fund was created in accordance with article 55 of the Charter of the United Nations that does not take sovereignty away from nation-states but deals instead with international

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economic and social cooperation between countries on the basis of universal respect for human rights. This respect for state sovereignty is reflected in Resolution 57(I) of 1946 that explicitly states that ‘The Fund shall not engage in activity in any country except in consultation with, and with the consent of, the Government concerned’ (I.2.(c)), a princi- ple that continues to be applicable for all UNICEF country programmes. Far from being a cosmopolitan superstructure or world administration responsible for the wellbeing and the rights of the world’s children, UNICEF is an intergovernmental entity that, within the limits of the funds at its disposal, supports countries with material resources and technical expertise and assists them to develop national childhood and youth policies. It can hence achieve its mandate ‘to advocate for the protection of children’s rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential’ (1996) only through collaboration with sovereign national governments.

UNICEF not only depends on countries for delivering its programmes, it is also gov- erned and controlled by nation-states. Its central governing entity is the Executive Board that adopts UNICEF’s mission statement and strategic plans, establishes policies, approves programmes, including the individual country programmes, and decides on administrative and financial plans and budgets. The Executive Board is made up of 36 Member States regionally allocated across the globe and usually elected for a three-year term – only the USA has uninterruptedly been a member of the Executive Board since 1946 (UNICEF, 2020). Since its inception, UNICEF has been administered by the Executive Director – every one of them has been an American citizen (Hlavac, 2013) – in accordance with the policies determined by the Executive Board that reports to the Economic and Social Council, which in turn reports to the UN General Assembly. As affirmed in its 1996 mission statement, UNICEF does not take direct responsibility for the world’s children, that is the task of States, but mobilizes political will and material resources to help countries, in particular developing countries, to adopt appropriate policies and deliver adequate services for children and their families. In other words, children and young people cannot directly turn to UNICEF as the duty bearer for securing their rights. It is an entity controlled by national governments that ultimately respects each and every other country’s sovereignty to develop childhood and youth policies. The champion of the world’s children, rather than being a cosmopolitan government for all children, is bound hand and foot by nation-states who remain in charge.

From a cosmopolitan view on global justice, entrusting nation-states the final responsibility for the elaboration of childhood and youth policies, might look quite suspicious.

National governments are in many instances regarded to be insufficiently aware, not interested or even openly against implementing universal children’s rights. An example is the way national legislation and policies are judged to address juvenile justice in a far too repressive manner compared to the humane, restorative approaches advocated for in international law. The remaining centrality of the Westphalian nation-state in a globalizing world order, combined with the absence of a powerful transnational regulatory framework, poses important challenges for achieving social justice for children (Fraser, 2009). However, cosmopolitan outlooks of global childhood are also criticised by point- ing at the need to preserve particular, local and national understandings of children and childhood. A well-known critique of globalized children’s rights discourses has been expressed by Erica Burman, who wrote in one of the early volumes of this journal that:

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‘. . .the universalised discourse of rights, together with its undoubted moral component, allows for the naturalization of normative evaluations about what children are, and should be, like.

(. . .) highly culturally, class and gender-specific resources inform international policy and programming for children. (. . .) The consequences are that northern privilege is inscribed in international policies for children, and children and families who fail to conform to those models are either stigmatized or rendered invisible’ (Burman, 1996: 49)

The divide between cosmopolitan/global and particular/local perspectives on children and childhood, as well as the relevance of this divide, continues to fuel many discussions in childhood studies literature (see for instance recently: De Castro, 2020; Drerup and Schweiger, 2019; Hanson et al., 2018; Wall, 2019). What seems less explored in these debates is the role played by nation-states and the solidarity between them. Calls for recognizing international solidarity rights initially appeared during the two decades following World War II, which was during the period of decolonisation and the formation of newly independent states in the Middle East, South-East Asia and Africa. These rights are based on the collaboration and joint efforts of all actors on the international scene, including States who remain the central players, as well as individuals, peoples, civil society, the private sector and international organisations. The need for the recognition of these rights, or the revival of what have been called ‘third generation’ human rights, arises from the global interdependence of all peoples and nations and has been justified because they are needed to realize the first generation of civil and political rights and the second generation of economic, social and cultural rights (Wellman, 2000).

A sophisticated elaboration of the right to solidarity can be found in the Draft Declaration on the right to international solidarity that was developed in 2017 by the Independent Expert on human rights and international solidarity (United Nations, 2017).

Even if this draft Declaration mentions children only in passing, it offers an attractive framework to reflect from a solidarity perspective on who bears responsibilities for the well-being and rights of the world’s children. The draft Declaration attaches great impor- tance to the sovereignty of each State that can set its own priorities and the means and methods of achieving those in accordance with international human rights law, as well as to equitable, just and fair partnerships of States as the basis of international cooperation.

To promote a world order in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized, including the rights of all children, Article 3(a) of the draft Declaration describes that the objective of international solidarity should be to create an enabling environment for ‘Preventing and removing the causes of asymmetries and inequities between and within States, and the structural obstacles and factors that generate and perpetuate poverty and inequality worldwide’.

Catchphrases such as ‘Leave no child behind’, ‘Children first’ or ‘Every child counts’

are rhetorical masks that do not in and of itself fulfil childhood and youth policies that are, within the current international political system, above all the responsibility of sovereign nation-states. These are, in contrast to many cosmopolitan beliefs, the entities in charge of securing the well-being and rights of the world’s children. When UNICEF was awarded, in 1965, the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee motivated its choice by arguing that ‘UNICEF’s activities marked a breakthrough for the idea of solidarity between nations, which helped to reduce the difference between rich and poor states’.⁶

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Even if the state of the world has dramatically changed since then, in the absence of social and economic equality of all countries and regions, international solidarity between sovereign nation-states, including all their shortcomings and limitations, will continue playing a pivotal role for the well-being and rights of children in this world.

Notes

1. https://www.unicef.org/sowc/

2. https://www.humanium.org/en/

3. https://www.wvi.org

4. https://www.savethechildren.net/

5. https://www.unicef.org/results

6. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1965/unicef/facts/

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Karl Hanson, Co-editor University of Geneva, Switzerland November 2020