Child Poverty in Mozambique. A Situation and Trend ... - Unicef

towards realising these rights will take considerable time, even under optimistic
scenarios. There are also trade-offs to be made in resource allocation, leading to
difficult choices in prioritising which rights to address. However, this does not mean
that a rights based approach cannot be applied in Mozambique: the progressive
realisation of children’s rights is of fundamental importance – i.e. achieving sustained
improvements in child development outcomes to the maximum of the available
resources.
Two key steps are used in this Situation Analysis to examine childhood poverty and
children’s socioeconomic situation in Mozambique from a rights-based perspective:
1- A causality analysis, looking beyond immediate or proximate causes in order to
identify the underlying causes of a problem. For example, discrimination based on
gender is an underlying cause explaining many manifestations of girls’ and boys’
situation in Mozambique. An analysis of causality is essential in understanding the
systematic nature of children’s rights violations.
2- An analysis of gaps in capacity, starting from the premise that rights violations
often occur because specific duty-bearers lack the capacity to fulfil their obligations.
A capacity analysis explores capacity in terms of recognition of responsibilities,
possession of legitimate authority to act on duties (whether legally, politically, socially
or culturally legitimate), human, economic and organisational resources, capability to
make informed decisions and learn from the results and capability to communicate
(i.e. to access and participate in the generation and sharing of information).
3. Deprivation-based approach to childhood poverty
Childhood poverty examines the poverty specifically experienced by human beings in
any society, during their childhood. Such poverty clearly has immediate effects on the
situation and experience of poor children while they are children. However, childhood
poverty is distinctive in that some of its effects are felt throughout the child’s life,
passing on into adulthood, regardless of the adult’s poverty status. For example,
stunting, reduced mental development, or psychological trauma experienced in
childhood affect a person for the rest of her or his life. Furthermore, all evidence
shows that poor children have a high chance of growing up to become poor adults
and in turn, have poor children. The inter-generational nature of childhood poverty
therefore also needs to be recognised and addressed. 3
Mozambique’s first Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, the PARPA I (2001 - 2005),
defined absolute poverty as “the inability of individuals to ensure for themselves and
their dependants a set of basic minimum conditions necessary for their subsistence
and well-being in accordance with the norms of society” (GoM, 2001, p.10). 4 This is
consistent with the official national consumption-based poverty measure, by which
households’ levels of consumption are assessed and compared to poverty lines
constructed from a basket of basic foodstuffs conforming to a basic caloric minimum.
Many observers subsequently proposed that this definition of poverty should be
supported by more multi-dimensional measures in order to present a broader, more
pluralistic analysis and support rights-based analysis (e.g. Isaksen et al., 2005; G20,
2004). This view was formally adopted by the Government in the country’s second
Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, the PARPA II (2006 - 2009). While reporting on the
consumption-based measure in its poverty analysis, PARPA II adopts a new definition
3 For a detailed overview of childhood poverty, see Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre website (childhoodpoverty.org).
4 PARPA (Plano de Acção para a Redução da Pobreza Absoluta) is equivalent to Mozambique’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).
CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE: A SITUATION AND TRENDS ANALYSIS
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