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24.2 (Summer 2000) Rethinking Childhood: Perspectives on Children's Rights

Who Profits?

Hydro-Québec, the world's largest hydroelectric utility, ended fiscal year 1998 with a net income of $679 million. These profits "contribute to economic growth [and] benefit society as a whole," according to the corporation's latest annual report. No such benefits reach the Innu community. Crowded and sedentarized into pre-fabricated houses, the Innu live in poverty and suffer the highest suicide rate in Canada.

Torn Apart: San Children as Change Agents in a Process of Acculturation; A Report on the Educational Situation of San Children i

A diverse group of researchers, educators and San fieldworkers, among others, helped to compile this report by Willemien Le Roux for the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa. This cooperation has resulted in a dense survey of the histories and present state of education of San groups in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. In seeking to explain the ongoing marginalisation of the San, the authors do not shy away from addressing the reasons for San children's high dropout rate from school.

The Right to Organize: The Working Children's Movement in India

The economic exploitation of children is one of the most prominent forms of child abuse and neglect in the world today. The phenomenon of child labor is not new. Children have worked throughout history. Child work is not just a developing country phenomenon. Children also work in countries such as the USA, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands.

The Rice Decision

The U.S. Supreme Court decided perhaps the most important Hawaiian case ever on February 23, 2000 -- Rice v. Cayetano. Plaintiff Rice, a caucasian rancher whose family has long lived in Hawai'i, sued the State of Hawai'i (Governor Cayetano) for its practice of limiting, by race, the right to vote for Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) trustees.(1)

The Ituri Forest People's Fund

Efe (pygmy) foragers and Lese farmers in the Ituri rainforest of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo need your help to keep their health clinic open and safeguard their children's education.

The community of farmers and hunter-gatherers is working hard to ensure that children can go to school and that when they get sick they have access to primary health care. Due to the lack of assistance from the government they decided to take their futures into their own hands and establish and run their own clinic and primary school.

The History of Children's Rights: Whose Story?

It is impossible for any welfare agency, at any level, to ignore the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). All policy and program planning for children claim to be "rights-based," and this Convention is inscribed into the mission statements of intergovernmental agencies and non-governmental organisations. It justifies the existence of a myriad of child rights organisations and specialists. All this has happened within the space of just over two decades, so that it appears as if the history of child rights is recent, modern and novel.

Sna Jtz'ibajom Special Project: Tzeltal-Tzotzil Mayan Literacy Program

Sna Jtz'ibajom is a Tzotzil-Tzeltal Mayan cultural cooperative in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Its goal is to find a new voice for traditional Mayan beliefs and customs on paper, the stage, the airwaves, and in film. A segment of the cooperative is the Tzeltal-Tzotzil Mayan Literacy Program, which promotes the Mayan language through a six-month course to students ranging in ages from 10-60 (the great majority are now children and a few young men).

Rights and Responsibilities in HIV-Affected Communities in Zimbabwe

All members of a community are vulnerable to HIV infection. More than half of all those who become infected, however, do so under the age of 25 and most die before the age of 35. Children are at high risk of infection in their early sexual experiences, and, as parents die, they also take on increasing burdens of responsibility. Children living in AIDS-affected communities have a right to protection, to prevent themselves becoming infected with HIV, a right to care, and a right to support. Children have a right to grow up without taking sole responsibility for households.

Plant Trees to Raise People: Introducing a New Cultural Survival Special Project

On the island of Mindanao, the last virgin rainforest in the Philippines struggles to remain alive. Mindanao is also the ancestral home of the Higaonon, a never conquered or colonized tribal people who still maintain a distinct dialect. Upholding ancestral customary laws, retaining ancient traditions, and living in harmony with one another, the Higaonon respect their rainforest with a reverence similar to prayer. As Higaonon tribal leader Datu Efren Mandipensa expresses it, "Every morning I whisper `Peace' to the trees. It passes from tree to tree throughout the forest."

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