3071-The political economy of new slavery

Rachel Nizan 139
Childhood
According to the CRC, a child is defined as ‘every human being under
the age of 18 years unless, under the law applicable to the child, majority
is attained earlier’ (CRC, Article 1, as cited in Hart, 1997, p. 10). This
definition, however, has a number of limitations. First, the definition is
very broad and therefore problems might arise from jumbling together
different age groups, since a five-year-old and 15-year-old are quite
different. It might therefore be more useful to use sub-categories such
as infant, child and adolescent, 3 although these categories do not
necessarily reflect differences in experience for children in different
contexts adequately. Some very young children who need to work
are perfectly competent to make their own decisions, whereas children
in other situations might need more guidance. It thus seems that
chronological age alone is not sufficient to define the concept of child.
‘[C]ultural and social factors [and the degree of] social responsibility
have to be taken into account, too’ (Rodgers and Standing, 1981, as cited
in Grootaert and Patrinos, 1999, p. 2).
It looks like the concepts of the child and of childhood as used
in international conventions are defined from a Western perspective. 4
Furthermore, children were not always perceived as helpless creatures
needy of adults in the West either; any rights they had were very limited.
In short, childhood is a fairly new and problematic concept, emanating
from ‘liberal-democracies and industrial societies’ (Ennew and Milne,
1989, p. 12).
This concept of childhood leaves little room for the realities of life
in Less Developed Countries (LDCs), where children often have to work
to support themselves and their families and have to take on responsibilities
from an early age, which are not acknowledged in the CRC or LDC
country legislation. It might be useful to have a minimum standard in
the context of age for purposes of analysis, and also with regards to
labour legislation and so forth. Yet, if this does not take into account
regional variations and differing needs, it becomes problematic, as our
Western views are readily imposed on others, which Burman (1996, p. 46)
points out might ‘map uneasily on to Southern settings’. This merits a
closer examination, especially since the ‘Western’ views on childhood
form the basis of the CRC, which has been widely ratified and is seen by
some as ‘rapidly approaching the status of the world’s first universal law’
(Green, 1998, p. 202). 5 The generalized concept of childhood is crucial
to our understanding of the relationship of children and work and how
we think about child labour. Children should be playing and should not