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In many developing countries like Benin, there are many obstacles to getting an education. The economy is heavily agricultural, which leads poor parents to make their children stay home to contribute to the harvest. However, since its independence in 1960, the country has created several reforms aimed towards bettering the situation.

“The system is public and secular” (Education), which theoretically helps attract children from all different religions. However, it was found that this does not do enough to encourage children, especially girls, to actually continue going to school. Even when some primary schools stopped demanding tuition, attendance rates dropped off after a certain point.

Infrastructure is a widespread problem in Benin, and it of course extends to the schools as well. The GPE (Global Partnership for Education) set up several well-ventilated, sturdy buildings, but obviously more must be set up in order to be accessible to the children that need it. (Education)

However, the most effective GPE program that was installed was the canteen program. Many teachers noted that many children would walk back home for lunch and not come back. By offering a hot meal everyday, attendance shot up, especially with female students. (Benefits)

Another program directly delivered school supplies such as pencils and a tote bag, so that they would not be turned away for not having the right materials. This, combined with the lunch canteen program has proven to be very effective. (Education) The children still have to walk long distances to reach school, but these advances make the public hopeful that further help is not far behind.

“Benin.” StateUniversity.com, Education, https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/160/Benin.html

“Benin: The Multiple Benefits of School Lunch.” World Bank, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2019/05/06/benin-the-multiple-benefits-of-school-lunch

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Many people in Canada want to see bullying stopped, as suicide rates for teenagers rise. Currently, Quebec reports about 10% of students who are bullied in school, as opposed to 8% in all other provinces. However, even a petition that received 3,000 signatures (led by student Émanuelle Després), did not warrant government action because of monetary problems.

The Canadian government has apparently already allocated 6 million Canadian dollars meant to be used to create “ads and media campaigns.” It claims that there is nothing in the budget to allocate for more resources for anti bullying prevention. It is also found that some of the measures the petition called for in zero tolerance policies, such as “calls for expulsion, metal detectors, and surveillance cameras have been shown by research to be ineffective in reducing bullying.”

“Bullying Prevention in Schools.” Public Safety Canada / Sécurité Publique Canada, 31 Jan. 2018, https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/bllng-prvntn-schls/index-en.aspx.

Seguin, Rheal. “In Quebec, Anti-Bullying Bill Provokes a Political Fight.” The Globe and Mail, 3 May 2018, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/in-quebec-anti-bullying-bill-provokes-a-political-fight/article549887/.

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France used to be 2nd globally for internet freedom until after 2015 (with the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack). However, France has strange laws surrounding the exploitation of children. The country has "limited filtering" on child pornography as its government wants to "promote freedom of the press and speech online by allowing unfiltered access to most content."(Internet) Not only that, but one source says that there is no explicit law outlawing the sale of children.

What is more horrific about the situation are the actual percentages of children being portrayed. " According to inhope.org statistics, 21% of trafficked material depicts teenage minors, 72% pre-minors and 7% infants." (Dimoulis) Interestingly, this source also states that up to 44% of children shown in pornography come from the United States. Up to 40% come from Europe as well. (Dimoulis)

It is incredibly difficult for the French government to track those who distribute child pornography. Nowadays, the only way to access it is through the "Dark Web", which connects thousands of "users" to a single "public address." Other compounding factors that slow investigations are things like "The increased implementation of encryption, the development of remote and multi-layered storage and the use of decentralized virtual currencies... " (Dimoulis) Therefore, within the time it takes to track down and pinpoint the location of a trafficked child, they are often dead or already trafficked to another country.

- “Internet Censorship in France.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 15 Sept. 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_France.
- “Committee on the Rights of the Child Considers Report of France.” OHCHR, https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16950&LangID=E.
- Dimoulis, Vasilis. “CHILD PORNOGRAPHY IN A CLOUD ERA.” 2018.

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In Burundi, life is especially hard for children with mental and physical disabilities. It affects their home life, academic career, and their ability to get even manual labor jobs. Often they are even taken away from their families to be placed in “health care institutions”, meant to simply separate them from the rest of society. Reasons for the stigma against them includes “stigma, lack of awareness and a dearth of support services for children and their families.” (Barriga)

Burundi is part of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and of the East African Community (EAC), whose plan for addressing these injustices include “legislative frameworks” to protect disabled children/people on a legal level, studies to be done on the actual numbers of the disabled, for disabled-friendly transportation and ramps to be implemented at least in government buildings, and “the establishment of a regional disability council.” (Barriga) But to fully fix this issue, the stigma against those with disabilities must be addressed. There need to be counselors or informational pamphlets or some sort of informational medium that would help the citizens of Burundi understand. Until the parents and the peers of disabled children fully understand disability, no legislative measures will have any lasting effect.

Barriga, Shantha Rau, et al. “Children with Disabilities: Deprivation of Liberty in the Name of Care and Treatment.” Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch, 7 Mar. 2017, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/07/children-disabilities-deprivation-liberty-name-care-and-treatment#.

“Preventing Sexual Violence against Children with Disabilities - Burundi.” ReliefWeb, OCHA, 27 Feb. 2016, https://reliefweb.int/report/burundi/preventing-sexual-violence-against-children-disabilities

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It’s hard to find one narrative about the current youth literacy situation in Cameroon, but at least what there is tells a positive story. UNICEF defines youth as people within the ages of 15-24 years, and surprisingly, the levels of literacy for male and female youth are fairly similar (male = 85.4%, female = 86.4%). Even the secondary school statistics they provide show that participation in school seems to be pretty equal all around, with 52.9% of male youth and 48.7% of female youth actually going to secondary school on a regular basis. These statistics are measured under the assumption that literacy not only includes being able to read and write on a simple level, but also knowing basic math. (Statistics)

The Global Partnership for Education states that the main problems in Cameroon relating to education is “poor quality, weak governance and accountability across the system leading to the inequitable and inefficient distribution of resources, and persistent disparities related to gender, region of residence and income” (Education). So what can be done to help? The GPE says that the main solutions are improving the educational infrastructure and existing staff currently in place in Cameroon schools. Even more important, however, is the need to keep children in schools by making sure parents know that their children will receive the best future possible by going to school regularly, rather than dropping out early to do jobs around the house.

Sources

“Statistics.” UNICEF, 24 Dec. 2013, https://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cameroon_statistics.html

“Education in Cameroon.” Education in Cameroon | Global Partnership for Education, https://www.globalpartnership.org/country/cameroon

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In the early 20th century, France even held the reputation for being the most welcoming country to immigrants, especially after the huge losses caused by the 2 World Wars, both in population and in property damage. (“Immigration”) Many immigrants, or descendants of immigrants, were originally from some parts of Europe or a former French colony. These colonies include Algeria and Morocco, which comprise 16% and 11% of the immigrant population. (Sawe) Rising numbers of immigrants and a higher standard of living led to an overall population rise. The influx of children, however, was a unique problem. It created the need to make better education systems and buildings, as well as more universities to guide them into jobs. (“Immigration”) And while this did stimulate the economy, as the young people were able to buy things and contribute to the consumerist market, it did not mean that immigrants were accepted. As racial discrimination rose in the late 20th century, it led to stricter regulations on who was allowed into France, as French people were more willing to take the jobs that immigrants had traditionally held. Current regulations continue to discriminate against immigrants, as “religious symbols and/or clothing are banned in public spaces, a law that especially affects Muslim women in their daily life, especially those in school.

“Immigration.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/place/France/Immigration.

Sawe, Benjamin Elisha. "Which Countries Do French Immigrants Originate From?" WorldAtlas, Apr. 25, 2017, worldatlas.com/articles/where-do-french-immigrants-come-from.html

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Extremely violent discipline against children is, in fact, considered child abuse. The World Health Organization considers it to be defined as “all forms of physical and emotional ill-treatment, sexual abuse, neglect and exploitation that results in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, development or dignity” (Badoe) Risk factors in Africa that often include belonging to 3 or more families and the child’s mother dying or receiving emotional abuse before the age of 13. (Badoe) Domestic, internal conflict often branches out to other issues like human trafficking, child marriage, and the enlargement of child soldier battalions. That is why the World Health Organization considers it critical that the problems in the home need to be fixed, especially since Benin is part of the biggest human trafficking network in Africa.

Problems that counteract any measures to solve this issue are parents and clinicians who simply don’t know about the situation. The WHO states that the best place to check for abuse-related bruises is on the head and neck, rather than the shins and calves, where they more likely occurred from accidents. (Badoe) That, along with burns, should help willing parents and administrators to identify signs of overly harsh discipline before it devolves into worse abuse.

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Child poverty is a rampant problem for Canada, because being born into a lower socioeconomic level leaves them disadvantaged from the very beginning of their lives to the end. They have worse nutrition and home life than their richer counterparts, which lead to physical and mental problems later on, which generate more medical bills. They often aren’t zoned for nicer schools that offer the programs to allow them to get high paying jobs like those in the medical field, and they are rarely encouraged to better their own situations.

An organization named Campaign 2000 took the 2015 Canadian census data and found that child poverty is about 17.4% nationwide. They said, “Four Quebec ridings — all in the Montreal area — are among the 30 worst in the country. In the Ville-Marie–Sud-Ouest–Île-des-Soeurs riding, more than 38 per cent of children live in poverty, giving it the fifth worst child poverty rate in the country. In Papineau, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s riding, almost 30 per cent of children live in a low-income situation.” (McInnis) And while there was a program called the Canadian Child Benefit implemented in that same year, Campaign 2000 found that it only decreased child poverty rates by about 1.2%. Luckily, the survey also found that 9 out of 10 of the lowest child poverty “ridings” were also found in the province of Quebec. (McInnis)

McInnis, Allen. “Portrait of Child Poverty Shows Montreal Ridings among the Worst in Canada.” Montreal Gazette, Post Media, 18 June 2018, https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/portrait-of-child-poverty-shows-montreal-ridings-among-the-worst-in-canada.

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In 2011, a UN task force found that there were “grave violations” of human rights in terms of children in the African country of Chad. (Maki) This study spanned over the course of one and a half years and found that children as young as twelve were still being used as child soldiers and that rape and sexual violence were still rampant. The main driving factors are the fact that 87.9 of the country’s population is under the poverty line, and general civil unrest. (Derosiers) Even worse, this source found that half of Chad’s entire population is made up of children, coming up to about 48.12 percent of the overall population. Their parents generally have so many children in the first place because of the high infant mortality rate and their usefulness in contributing to the family income. Chad’s lack of concern for child human rights violations only exacerbates the human trafficking issues and harm done to children as they work in hazardous places, like in factories with heavy machinery. It even found that 72.2 percent of children aged 5-14 work full time, and it goes up when you consider children who attend school and work, this statistic goes up to 77.2 percent. (Derosiers)

Derosiers, Katherine. “10 Facts About Child Labor in Chad.” The Borgen Project, 21 Aug. 2019, https://borgenproject.org/10-facts-about-child-labor-in-chad/.

Maki, Reid, and Edith M. Lederer. “UN Reports ‘Grave Violations’ against Children in Chad Including Child Soldiers and Rapes.” Stopchildlabor, 18 Feb. 2011, http://stopchildlabor.org/?p=2346.

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Djibouti has promised to end child marriage by 2030; luckily, child marriage rates there are already fairly low, with only 5% of girls married before the age of 18 and 2% married before their 15th birthday. (Girls)

The World Bank summarizes the primary driving factors of child marriage well: “Girls often get married because of pressure from parents and relatives, poverty and lack of alternatives. Limited access to quality education and families’ prioritization of boys’ rather than girls’ education–in part because of limited job opportunities–contribute to perpetuate the practice.” (World)

On a smaller scale, girls running a household negates the costly need for a maid and provides heirs to the family line. Despite the popular opinion being that doing this is the best way for a girl to be useful to those around her, both husband and wife contributing to the household income would financially benefit the average family far more. Due to gender-based bias, girls are losing out on any opportunities to chase dream careers by being stunted in their education and forced into a life of servitude and child-rearing.

It almost always has a negative influence on the victim’s education, as they are forced to stop attending school, no matter how far along they are, to focus on their new marriage and conceiving children.

“World Bank Group.” World Bank Group, The World Bank, 24 Aug. 2017, https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/immersive-story/2017/08/22/educating-girls-ending-child-marriage.

“Girls Not Brides.” Girls Not Brides, The Idea Bureau, https://www.girlsnotbrides.org/child-marriage/djibouti/.

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The use of child soldiers in the conflicts of third-world countries is on the rise, as it has been for the past few decades.
The studies that accurately portray the experiences of child soldiers in "failed states" are few and far between, offering only a "limited perspective", but at least there is enough to get a general idea of the situation. It is said that the main factors pushing children to join militant groups is primarily educational. When there aren't adequate schools in their area, they tend to turn to armed fighting as a way of giving themselves a sense of purpose and belonging in a community. Other reasons could be an uncertain home life, where some children are neglected and even abused. (Haer)
Despite the fact that children make very undisciplined and ineffective fighters, some studies suggest that most groups recruit them simply to "fill ranks". Others make the point that children are much more malleable, so in the long term, their retainers have a much easier time controlling their behavior and indoctrinating them with the cause of the group.
Interestingly, the article sited several positive consequences of such an experience on select former child soldiers. A study called Belsky et al. found that young adults who took part in militant groups were more likely to vote than those who didn't, and that some who were genetically "gifted" were capable of "positive adaptation".

Image Citation: Dudenhoeffer, Ann-Lynn. “Understanding the Recruitment of Child Soldiers in Africa.” ACCORD, African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes, 16 Aug. 2016, https://www.accord.org.za/conflict-trends/understanding-recruitment-child-soldiers-africa/

Article Citation: Haer, Roos. “Children and Armed Conflict: Looking at the Future and Learning from the Past.” Taylor & Francis, Third World Quarterly, 21 Jan. 2019, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2018.1552131?scroll=top&needAccess=true

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This particular type of abuse occurs world-wide, but this week's post focuses on a Belgium-based study done in sport-related environments. The article notes that this is a prime place for abuse to happen because of the “culture” surrounding sports where the coach is allowed to maintain physical contact on and off the field while holding a good relationship with the parents. One study mentioned that “Sexual abuse was defined as groomed and/or coercing collaboration in sexual acts where the victim has been trapped by the perpetrator” (Brackenridge & Fasting, 2005Brackenridge, C. H., & Fasting, K.(2005). What this plethora of studies found was that girls and minority groups were more likely to receive abuse, but while coaches were generally expected to be the “perpetrators”, sometimes the abusers were fellow athletes. Interestingly, the study also found that the higher level of competition the athletes achieved or if the more hard-working than their peers, the more likely sexual abuse was from their superiors or others around them. (Fasting & Sand, 2015) (Vertommen et al. (2016) Another study, Nielson (2011), found that despite the divide in genders throughout the sport world in Belgium, both genders received an almost equal amount of “sexist comments” from older, male coaches. However, the article itself mentions that there are too few studies included and the conclusions drawn are too general to get a clear idea of the extent of sexual abuse in Belgium as a whole.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10538712.2018.1477222?scroll=top&needAccess=true