“Unless I work, we cannot run our house”:

Social and Economic Rights for Children

in Ethiopia and Andhra Pradesh, India

Virginia Morrow

Senior Research Officer, Young Lives

25 Years of the UNCRC Conference

Leiden, 18-19 November 2014

YOUNG LIVES LONGITUDINAL DESIGN

• 12,000 children in Ethiopia, India (former Andhra Pradesh), Peru, Vietnam

• Two age cohorts in each country:

- 2,000 children born in 2000-01

- 1,000 children born in 1994-95

• Pro-poor sample: 20 sites in each country selected to reflect country

diversity, rural-urban, livelihoods, ethnicity, gender

• 4 major household survey rounds: in 2002; 2006/7; 2009; 2013. Final round

2016

• Qualitative research – narrative biographical research

• School study and other studies

• Comprehensive focus – nutrition, development, cognitive and psycho-

social, education, social protection

• Partnership of government and independent research institutes

• Commissioned by UK Dept for International Development

• Tracking progress of the Millennium Development Goals

• Informing post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals agenda

ABOUT YOUNG LIVES

AGES: 1 5 8 12 15

YOU

NG

ER C

OH

OR

T

Following 2,000 children

OLD

ER C

OH

OR

T

Following 1,000 children

AGES: 8 12 15 19 22

Round 1 Round 2 Round 3 Round 4 Round 5 2002 2006 2009 2013 2016

YOUNG LIVES COHORT STUDY

Same age children at

different time points

Qualitative nested sample

1 2 3 4

Linked

school surveys

• Focus on the daily lives and well-being of

children and young people in a selection of

YL communities – rapid social change and

modernity/globalisation

• Capture important changes during

childhood and children’s trajectories - a

life-course approach

• Understand how policies and services are

experienced by children (and caregivers) -

inequalities - and who is ‘left behind’

• Data collection: 2007, 2008, 2011, 2014

Qualitative researchQUALITATIVE RESEARCH

sub-sample of 50 young people

in each country (equal numbers of

boys and girls and younger and

older cohort)

including focus children, their

carers, teachers, community

representatives

four communities (former AP,

Peru and Vietnam) and five

communities (Ethiopia)

combination of methods,

including interviews, group

discussions, creative/visual

methods

200+ case study children and young people

Qualitative researchQUALITATIVE RESEARCH

INDIA: POLICY CONTEXT

• Right to Education Act (2009)- increased enrolment

• Elimination: ‘child-labour free zones’ ‘the right to a

childhood’

• Social protection schemes for rural areas

• Most children work farming/domestic work within family

• Expectation that children will achieve at school

HARIKA,IN RURAL TELANGANA

2007

• Her father had injured his leg and could not work

• Harika was involved in cotton pollination work and going to school

• Found it difficult to manage both: “if I go to the fields I won’t get

an education”

• Wanted to become a teacher

In 2008

• Harika had received a scholarship of Rs 6,000/- per year, payable

conditional on completing school.

• Was still responsible for some farm work

• In 2010

• at College, aspiring to be a doctor

• “You will have a better life if you study… you will get better

jobs… you will get an educated husband.”

• [2014, Harika is married].

2010 IN POOMPUHAR, RURAL TELANGANA

• Shanmukapriya, aged 9: “No-one is going to the cotton

fields now.... All the sirs [head teacher, teachers] went

around the houses ... and told [families] that the police

will come and arrest the fathers... They said I have to go

to school every day. If I miss even for one day the police

will come and take [my] father away. [My parents] got

scared. That’s why they are sending me to school.... So I

am going regularly. Whenever they tell me to come and

work in the fields, I cried...”

• Children describe being punished when they miss school for

work.

• Criminalisation of children’s work?

ETHIOPIA

• Rapid rise in school enrolment, shift schooling in rural areas

• Children work as soon as they can – 90% of 8-9 year olds in

2009

• Some children unwilling to attend school:

• Defar: “Both my father and mother are getting old, Nobody

helps them with their work except me.”

• Working enables children to attend school:

• Mulu: “If I didn’t have a job, I couldn’t have attended class

because I would have had a financial constraint. ... Our

standard of living has improved since I started work.”

Haymanot, rural Ethiopia

• 2007, age 11, father had ‘died’, she had been ill,

missed school, but recovered after staying with an aunt

• Moved back home to look after her mother

• 2008, aged 12, despondent and worried, caring for her

sick mother, drought and food shortages

• Working hard in stone crushing work - paid in grain

• Says she wants to work and look after her mother.

HAYMANOT, RURAL ETHIOPIA

In 2011, age 15, Haymanot was married

• Family-arranged wedding “I stopped doing paid work…”

• Living with her husband near her mother, in a better

house, with a “better life … because we have enough

farm products”

• Hoped to continue school – “my husband has to allow

me”

• “I have to help and improve their life”

• though she gets tired “because I have to work in both

houses”

• By 2014, has a child, is separated from husband and

back living with her mother.

HAYMANOT, 2010

DISCUSSION

• In AP, India, right to education ‘trumps’ other rights

• Ethiopia, there has been flexibility eg in shift schooling

• But: right to dignity at work? respect for children’s

responsibilities?

UN Secretary-General’s Report on Status of CRC (2014):

• Right to participation for working children (inter alia)

• Implementation gap between UN CRC and actual living

conditions

• Many children find themselves living with multiple risks

and multiple hazards at once – complexity.

REFERENCES

Jo Boyden (2013) ‘“We’re not going to suffer like this in the mud”: Educational Aspirations, Social Mobility

and Independent Child Migration among Populations Living in Poverty’, Compare, 43.4: 580-600.

Jo Boyden and Michael Bourdillon (eds) (2012) Childhood Poverty: Multidisciplinary Approaches,

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Jo Boyden and Michael Bourdillon (eds) (2014) Growing up in Poverty: Findings from Young Lives,

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gina Crivello (2011) ‘Becoming Somebody’: Youth Transitions through Education and Migration in Peru',

Journal of Youth Studies 14.4: 395-411.

Gina Crivello, Virginia Morrow and Emma Wilson (2013) Young Lives Longitudinal Qualitative Research: A

Guide for Researchers, Technical Note 26, Young Lives, Oxford.

Virginia Morrow (2013) ‘Troubling Transitions? Young People's Experiences of Growing Up in Poverty in Rural

Andhra Pradesh, India, Journal of Youth Studies 16.1: 86-100.

Virginia Morrow and Kirrily Pells (2012) ‘Integrating Children’s Human Rights and Child Poverty Debates:

Examples from Young Lives in Ethiopia and India’, Sociology 46.5: 906-920.

Virginia Morrow, Yisak Tafere and Uma Vennam (2014) ‘Changes in Rural Children’s Use of Time: Evidence

from Ethiopia and Andhra Pradesh’, in J. Boyden and M. Bourdillon (eds) (2014) Growing up in Poverty:

Findings from Young Lives, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

UN (2014) Status of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Report of the Secretary-General, NewYork,

United Nations.

REFERENCES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & THANK YOU

Young Lives children, parents/caregivers as well as

community leaders, teachers, health workers and

others in communities

Fieldworkers, data-managers, survey enumerators

and supervisors, principal investigators and country

directors in each country

Oxford team

funders: DFID, DGIS, IrishAid, Oak Foundation,

Bernard Van Leer Foundation.

THANKS TO...

FINDING OUT MORE…

www.younglives.org.uk

• methods and research papers

• datasets (UK Data Archive)

• publications

• child profiles and photos

• e-newsletter

• YouTube – CRC@25 interviews

FINDING OUT MORE