Avec l’entrée en vigueur de la Convention des droits de l’enfant (CDE) en 1990, la communauté internationale a formellement matérialisé sa volonté de faire des droits de l’enfant, des droits à protéger en tout temps. La CDE vient compléter le dispositif juridique mis en place par le droit international humanitaire (DIH) pour protéger lesdits droits en période de conflit et inspirera la Charte africaine des droits et bien-être de l’enfant. Les Etats s’engagent ainsi à en faire une réalité, quelles que soient les circonstances. Mais l’engagement juridique est confronté aux conflits armés internes qui remettent en cause les droits fondamentaux clairement énoncés, notamment le droit à la santé et à l’éducation et qui favorisent la violation de ces droits. Dans ce mémoire, nous nous sommes interrogés sur les éventuelles causes qui peuvent expliquer que les engagements juridiques ne soient pas politiquement traduits en réalité concrète. Il s’agit de vérifier si le dispositif juridique de protection ne porte pas en lui-même les germes de cette violation. Une autre hypothèse serait que l’absence de reconnaissance formelle de la responsabilité des groupes armés non étatiques impliqués dans ces conflits, en ce qui concerne le respect des droits pourrait être un élément qui favorise les violations. Ainsi, dans la première partie, après avoir retracé l’évolution historique et juridique de la reconnaissance des droits de l’enfant, nous nous sommes inscrits dans le contexte du conflit en Côte d’Ivoire entre 2002 et 2011, pour montrer les impacts des conflits armés internes sur la jouissance des droits de l’enfant, notamment à la santé et à l’éducation. La deuxième partie nous permet de relever d’une part, les insuffisances du dispositif de protection, les lacunes relatives à la non prise en compte formelle des entités armées non étatiques, et de faire des réflexions en termes de perspectives pour une meilleure effectivité du respect des droits de l’enfant en période de conflit armé non international, d’autre part. / With the entry into force of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1990, the international community has formally materialized its commitment to make them, rights to be protected at all times. CRC completes the legal framework established by international humanitarian law (IHL) to protect these rights in conflict and inspire the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. States are thus required to make it a reality, whatever the circumstances. But the legal commitment is faced with internal conflicts that challenge the fundamental rights clearly stated, including the right to health and education and promote the child’s rights violations. In this thesis, we asked about the possible causes that can explain that the legal commitments are not translated into political reality. This is to verify whether the legal protection device does not in itself the seeds of these violations. Another hypothesis is that the lack of formal recognition of the responsibility of non-state armed groups involved in these conflicts, as regards the rights, could be an element that facilitates violations. Thus, in the first part, after tracing the history and legal development of the recognition of the rights of the child, we registered in the context of the conflict in Côte d'Ivoire between 2002 and 2011, to show the impact of internal armed on the enjoyment of children's rights to health and education conflicts. The second part allows us to meet the one hand, the shortcomings of the protection, the gaps in the non formal consideration of non-state armed entities, and make reflections in terms of prospects for improving effectiveness of compliance of the rights during non-international armed conflict, on the other hand.

I föreliggande studie undersöks hur rättssäkerheten tillämpas och tolkas allmänt för barn som placeras utanför det egna hemmet av socialtjänsten samt hur rättssäkerheten tolkas och tillämpas när det rör barn som är placerade på ideella kvinnojourer. Studien är av rättssociologisk art. Metoden som används i studien är en kombination av rättsdogmatisk metod och samhällsvetenskaplig metod. Detta för att genom den rättsdogmatiska metoden studera lagstiftning och den samhällsvetenskapliga undersöka hur lagen tillämpas i praktiken. Materialet består av texter samt intervju. Teorier om rättssäkerhet används för att skapa en förståelse av materialet (Staaf; Petczenik) Studien visar att det finns brister i den formella rättssäkerheten samt att den materiella rättssäkerheten inte diskuteras över huvudtaget. Studiens resultat visar även att det finns ett glapp mellan rätten och dess tillämpning. / The present study examines how the rule of law is applied and interpreted for children placed outside their home by social services and how the rule of law are interpreted and applied in the case of children placed on non-profit refuges. The study has a sociology of law approach. Methods used in the study are a combination of legal dogmatic and social scientific method. The material consists of texts and one interview. Theories of the rule of law is used to create an understanding of the material (Staaf; Petczenik). The study shows that there are deficiencies in the formal legal rights as well as to the substantive legal rights, that will not be discussed at all. The results of the study shows that there is a gap between the law and its application.

Cette thèse porte sur la mutation contemporaine des représentations et pratiques sociales relatives à « l’enfant placé » au Bénin. Sous la dénomination vìɖómεgɔ́n de la langue Fòn du Bénin méridional, se perpétue une pratique sociale séculaire qui consiste à « placer » un enfant en dehors de la famille de ses géniteurs pendant le temps de sa croissance et de son éducation. Cette pratique longtemps incontestée et qualifiée comme apprentissage éducatif par les acteurs béninois a été progressivement disqualifiée et stigmatisée comme esclavage d’enfants par les instances internationales (en tête desquelles l’Unicef) ainsi que par des pays africains devenus destinataires de vìɖómεgɔ́n (Gabon et Côte d’Ivoire notamment). La contestation internationale, grandissante depuis les années 1990, a amené une progressive contestation nationale de la pratique à l’intérieur du Bénin, fondant une transformation concomitante des représentations endogènes de l’enfant dans le pays. C’est la compréhension de l’ensemble des processus culturels et sociaux inhérents à cette mutation qui donne corps à une discussion sur la perception différenciée des droits de l’homme et des droits de l’enfant en Afrique. / This dissertation deals with current practice known in Benin (West Africa) as vìɖómεgɔ́n, i.e. litteraly “given child” out of one’s family, in order to get trained by external employement starting from early childhood. In Benin, this practice was considered as part of a socialization and education process, and as such has been uncontested during precolonial and colonial times. But in the 1990’s, it has been defined as slavery by International Organisations such as UNICEF or other NGO’s, and by some African countries (mainly Gabon and Ivory Coast) where vìɖómεgɔ́n are sent to be illegally employed in minor jobs on urban malls. International and external contestation has lead to an internal and national contestation within Benin. It is the purpose of this dissertation, taking on a historical and comprehensive bent, to build up the social understanding of the new situation where human rights and especially children’s rights are openly discussed. It aims to demonstrate the way and means of social dynamics providing new meanings to shifted contexts.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the development of integrated child welfare services through an exploration of how professionals providing such services make sense of children's rights and interpret their understandings in their approach to practice. The study focuses on professionals providing services for children between 5 and 13 years old within the Every Child Matters initiative, designed to support the assessment and provision of integrated child and family preventive services in England. The aims were to explore professional understandings of, and engagement with children's rights, provide a description and analysis of the empirical data, and develop a theorised understanding of the factors influencing sense-making and their implications for professionals' interpretations of their role. Areas of interest included similarities and differences in professionals' understandings and how these matched the understandings of service users and those evident in legal and policy texts. It was anticipated that professionals' understandings and engagement would draw on a complex mix of variable knowledge and embedded assumptions and practices, contested and negotiated in relation to welfare structures, texts and professional identities. The study was designed to explore whether this was borne out. A post-modernist theoretical approach was used, drawing on Bourdieu's theories of structured inequalities and influenced by Actor Network Theory's perspectives on networks. Using qualitative methodologies a case study was undertaken within one local area, linking a range of elements in an iterative process, with data from one phase interwoven in the next. Thirty-nine semi-structured interviews with professionals from social work, education and health settings drew on material developed from focus group discussions with child and parent service users and were supplemented by analysis of legal and policy texts and of 30 case records and site-based observations. Initial findings were discussed in parent and professional focus groups. In a second stage analysis of a subset of the data, these findings were explored further and situated within research and academic debate on professional practices and theories of childhood and of rights. Three broad configurations emerged from the data, reflecting differing professionals' constructions and practice interpretations of children's rights. Some participants interpreted children's rights as an essential ‘golden thread' underpinning their practice; others took a more selective ‘pick and mix' approach; and in a third perspective, children's rights were positioned as ‘uncomfortable accommodations' in relation to interpretations of professional role and of family life. These varying dispositions and related interpretations of professionals' regulated liberties were associated with perspectives on childhood, rights knowledge, professional setting, personal dispositions and relational practices. The findings are necessarily tentative and a causal relationship cannot be inferred. Three overarching themes emerged across these configurations. These related to: a common rights language and framework; children's longer-term welfare rights; and conceptualisations of the role of rights within relationships. The absence of a common rights framework to support professional and interprofessional discussions of children's rights was evident across all settings, as was a professional focus on the immediate and lack of attention to children's longer-term welfare, civil and social rights. Participants indicated that providing information about children's rights and exploring rights-based relationships in work with parents and carers was very rare and often avoided. The study proposes that in order to address children's rights in a more consistent and holistic way professionals need opportunities to explore theories of human and children's rights using a broad common framework such as the UNCRC. In integrating children's rights within professional practice increased attention is needed to children's longer-term welfare and development rights and to providing children and adults with information about, positive modelling of and opportunities to explore the place of rights in children's key relationships.

The special needs domain has long been recognised as problematic and adversarial. Much research has focused on areas of contention, such as the relationships between parents and practitioners, especially in educational settings, or on problems within the structure and operation of the domain. This study adopts a whole system approach in combining discussion of the structural basis of tension within the domain with an investigation of how both parents and practitioners describe, experience and respond to tensions within the special needs domain; such tensions being viewed as facets of the 'struggle' and 'fight' metaphor. Whole systems approaches are derived from the systems discipline, which developed initially out of the nineteenth century interest in organic and engineering systems, but more recently has focused on organisational and inter-organisational arrangements, including the part people play in enabling or disabling such arrangements. It is a strongly interdisciplinary approach more commonly found in organisational studies than in the social sciences more generally. Fifteen practitioners, from health and education settings, and twelve parents of children and young people with diagnoses of high functioning autism spectrum conditions participated in the study. The participants' stories of their experiences of the special needs domain were collected using a narrative inquiry approach. The data was analysed using concepts and theoretical frameworks derived from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Uri Bronfenbrenner and Charles Wright Mills. An exploration of the influences shaping the special needs domain revealed a number of areas of unresolved tension, some of which result in tensions for those involved in the domain such as can be described as 'fight', and some of which might be addressed by structural changes to the systems comprising the special needs domain such as those envisaged in forthcoming legislation. However importantly the empirical study found that many tensions and struggles experienced by both parents and practitioners did not emanate from the structures of the domain and therefore were unlikely to be amenable to structural changes. Parents 'struggle' to maintain their identity as 'good' parents, to acquire information and to navigate the system in order to access services and resources. Practitioners experience conflict as they seek to access information and training, engage in the complex choreography of cooperating and collaborating in interagency and interprofessional working and endeavour to harmonise their professional practice with agency and public policy priorities. The thesis concludes with a brief discussion of the relationship between whole system approaches and other interdisciplinary approaches to investigating complex problems in the human sciences. It is suggested that systems diagramming techniques such as systems mapping and rich pictures are useful additions to the sociologist's toolkit.

This thesis investigates three important themes within the development economics literature that link children, women and economic development. In the first essay we present an analysis of child labour among agricultural households in rural Nepal. We first examine the monetary contribution of child labour to family farms. For this purpose, within a non-separable agricultural household model we estimate a farm production function to obtain shadow wages for both children and adults employed on the farm. Our results reveal that the relative contribution of child labour to family income is not negligible. We then analyse child labour supply to explore whether it is driven by poverty or other reasons such as imperfections in the labour market. We estimate both a reduced form model and a structural equation model. This latter includes the estimated shadow wages and income from the previous analysis. Both models allow for an examination of how child labour supply reacts to a change in the opportunity cost of time and wealth. The reduced form results suggest that an increase in household's wealth (measured by land endowments) reduces child labour, specifically of girls. This result is consistent with the hypothesis of poverty-induced child labour in the presence of perfect labour markets. This decline, however, occurs for sufficiently high levels of wealth. Imperfections in the labour market may play a role in explaining child labour of boys and in households that are not at the top-end of the land distribution. Estimates of the structural labour supply model, however, yield results on wage and income elasticities that partly contradicts the theoretical predictions. In the second essay we analyse whether and how an increase in the participation of women in a key decision making body of local collective action institutions - the Executive Committee (EC) of Community Forest User Groups (CFUG) in Nepal - aspects forest protection, specifically household firewood collection. In many developing countries women are responsible for the collection and management of forest products essential to the daily lives of their household. Therefore they have stronger interests than men in ensuring the availability of these products. Despite this, women are often excluded from the decision-making process that sets out the rules to access and collect forest products within community forests. We account for the potential endogeneity of female participation and exploit an amendment made to the guidelines for CFUG formation that sets a higher threshold for women representation in the Executive Committee to evaluate the impact of women on firewood extraction. The results indicate that higher female participation in the ECs of CFUGs leads to a decrease in firewood extraction. This evidence is suggestive that women are prioritising conservation to ensure sustainable firewood extraction for their daily needs. In the third essay we analyse the short and long-term impact of violence on education in Timor Leste. Specifically, we examine the effect of the 1999 violence on school attendance in 2001 and its longer-term impact on primary school completion of the same cohorts of children observed again in 2007. We compare the educational impact of the 1999 violence with the impact of other periods of high-intensity violence during the 25 years of Indonesian occupation. The short-term effects of the conflict are mixed. In the longer term, we find evidence of a substantial loss of human capital among boys in Timor Leste exposed to peaks of violence during the 25-year long conflict. The evidence suggests that this result may be due to household trade-offs between education and economic welfare.

This study from the onset sought to explore, through a postcolonial critique, the meaning ascribed to child labour by fishers in a fishing community in Ghana. The purpose was to inform practice in social work so that social justice might be achieved for working children and their parents. However the study expanded, methodologically and theoretically, to preliminarily include a psychoanalytically informed psychosocial and discursive approach, extending the postcolonial critique to develop a nuanced understandings of the fishers' lived experience of, and responses to, children's work. Distinct from the dominant reductionist and positivistic etiologic understandings of child labour, this approach neither derides child labour as morally reprehensible and unequivocally dangerous, nor romanticises its beneficial aspects and links to cultural and traditional beliefs and practices (see Klocker, 2012). Instead, enables understanding of the fishers as ‘defended subjects' who invest in certain discourses as a way of defending against their vulnerable selves. It also affords a critically reflexive understanding of myself as a ‘defended researcher', owing to my semi-insider position as a former child labourer, and of the impact of this on my research relationships and findings. The study is intended to inform social worker practices in order to deal with complex situations concerning the relationship among fishers and their children paying equal attention both to the inner and the social circumstances of the fishers (Wilson, Ruch, Lymbery, & Cooper, 2011). In this regard it is inspired by Mel Gray's (2005) contention that social work practice should be shaped by the extent to which local social, political, economic, historical and cultural factors, as well as local voices, mould and shape social work responses. The study is conducted using critical ethnographic design that draws on the lived experiences of 24 fishers. Attempts were made to explore the fishers' experiences using psychoanalytically informed method (FANI) in addition to other conventional methods. The study highlights the fishers' use of narratives of slavery to explicate child labour. It focuses on the relationships that the fishers' have developed with their children and with the laws surrounding the use of children in work. It gives an indication of how the fishers' violently and aggressively relate with their working children. It also highlights the fishers' rejection of the laws surrounding child labour as being foreign and an imposition which excludes customary laws. The study further examines the identities the fishers developed in relation to laws that regulate them and children's work. It suggests that others see the fishers as powerless subjects who don't matter. It also underscores my shame and worries as a researcher considered by the fishers as an ‘educated elite' who works for ‘white people'. It further highlights how I provided self-justifying explications to defend myself as a researcher. The findings imply that solutions to child labour need to be localised paying equal attention to both the psyche and the social life of the fishers. They speak to the imperative for critical review of social workers/NGOs practices taking into account the unconscious processes that go on between fishers as parents and social workers as service providers. This thesis introduces a psychosocial dimension and insight into debates on child labour in Ghana.

The 2011 Indian Census indicates that children under the age of 18 constitute more than 400 million, and most of them are Children at Risk (CAR). This study suggests that the care and protection of children at risk is not a twentieth- or twenty-first-century secular enterprise but has precedents in Protestant missions in India from the late eighteenth century. In the first section, the study focuses on evaluating contemporary Protestant mission contexts in India and a brief historical survey of Protestant missions to CAR in India through case studies. The evaluation concentrates on the implications of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) for the predominant Protestant models of mission in contemporary India - which may be summarised as child evangelism, child compassion and child advocacy. The thesis argues that child care and protection is increasingly becoming secularised and professionalised. Moreover, with the emergence of new laws and with increasing, vigilance from international and national agencies, and from Hindu fundamentalists, Christian mission to CAR is itself at risk. Under these circumstances, the study also investigates whether there is a transition from ideas of 'saving' CAR to ideas of protecting the human rights of CAR. In the second section, this hypothesis is further substantiated by case studies of select Protestant churches and Christian NGOs engaging with CAR in the cities of Bangalore and Chennai. Using empirical data, it then claims that the predominant Protestant approaches of evangelism, compassion, and advocacy are still underdeveloped and inadequate primarily because the majority of caregivers working with children still perceive CAR as objects of their mission - an assumption that may be contrary to UNCRC (Articles 14 and 30). Further, it argues that the churches and agencies most active among CAR are from a 'conservative' background, who are often exclusively 'spiritual' and otherworldly in their concerns. The final and most constructive section, based on the evaluations of the empirical data, seeks to recommend a preliminary theology of mission in and through the idea of 'childness' based on Matthew 18: 2-5, an idea developed by Adrian Thatcher in the context of a theology of child participation. Based on these foundations, it suggests that UNCRC can be integrated as a set of principles for contemporary Christian missions with CAR in South India through a missiological process called 'dialogue,' emerging from a pluralistic Indian context. It further proposes that adults and children are to be perceived not as either independent (liberational) or dependent (paternalistic) agencies, but as interdependent agencies working together in God's mission. This thesis finally proposes basic principles for Christian mission to/for/with CAR - a multi-dimensional approach integrating CAR as subjects of God's mission and not just as objects.

Denna studie syftar till att undersöka vilka förändringar som förväntas av en inkorporering av Förenta Nationernas barnkonvention i svensk lagstiftning. Sveriges riksdag röstade sommaren år 2018 igenom regeringens förslag om att inkorporera barnkonventionen, vilket innebär att konventionen blir svensk lag. Sverige har sedan ratificeringen år 1990 varit tvungna att följa barnkonventionens bestämmelser, dock har konventionen inte fått det genomslag som förväntats i landet. Regeringen anser att barnkonventionen genom en inkorporering kommer bidra till ett tydliggörande för barnens rättigheter. Studien kommer även granska och identifiera hur barnkonventionen ska inkorporeras, vilka insatser som regeringen har beslutat om och hur dessa ska genomföras. En inkorporering är dels önskvärd men även kritiserad, därför ska studien även analysera för vilka utmaningar och svårigheter som finns vid en inkorporering. Huvudproblemet som studien syftar till att diskutera är om inkorporeringen av barnkonventionen kommer vara tillräcklig för att luckorna i det barnrättsliga arbetet i Sverige ska tillgodoses. Syftet har besvarats genom intervjuer med sex personer som har kunskap om barnens rättigheter och information om dels den kommande inkorporeringen, dels de insatser som beslutats om samt de utmaningar som finns vid inkorporeringen av barnkonventionen. Resultatet visar att de förändringarna som intervjupersonerna förväntade sig av en inkorporering av barnkonventionen var både positiva och negativa. De positiva förväntningarna är att barnkonventionen får mer genomslag. Att barnets bästa kommer att prövas och att dem kommer att komma till tals i större utsträckning än tidigare. Ytterligare en positiv förändring är att Barnkonventionens kan bidra till en synvända för alla människor i samhället. Det vill säga, hur vi ser på barn, behandlar barn och pratar med barn. De negativa förväntningarna och utmaningarna vid en inkorporering är att konventionen kan uppfattas vag och att den i sig inte utgör en beslutsgrund. Det är därför viktigt att barnkonventionens bestämmelser fortsätts transformeras in i nationell lagstiftning. I intervjuerna uttrycktes även en oro för att regeringens ansvar i att se till att barnkonventionen följs förflyttas till rättstillämparen och att arbetet med att transformera konventionens bestämmelser stannar av. Studien identifierar även behovet av övriga insatser i form av kunskapslyft i skolan där barnen får lära sig om barnkonventionen och deras rättigheter och behovet av att regeringen fattar ett beslut om att tillträda tilläggsprotokoll 3. Det frivilliga tilläggsprotokollet utgör en möjlighet för barn att överklaga beslut som fattats i ärenden som rör dem till FN:s barnrättskommitté. / This study aims to investigate what changes are expected of the incorporation of the United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child into Swedish legalisation. The Swedish Parliament voted in the summer of 2018 through the Government's proposal to incorporate the Convention into Swedish legislation through incorporation. Since the ratification in 1990, Sweden has had to comply with the provision of the Convention, but the Convention has not had the impetus that was expected in the country. The Government believes that the Convention of the Rights of the Child, through incorporation, will introduce a symbolic clarification of the rights of the children. The study will also research and identify how the convention will be incorporated, what interventions the government has decided on and how these will be implemented. Incorporation is partly desirable, but also criticized, therefore, the study will also analyse the challenges and difficulties encountered in the incorporation of the convention of the Rights of the Child into Swedish legislation. The main problem that the study aims to discuss is whether the incorporation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child will be sufficient to accommodate the gaps in child justice in Sweden.     The aim of the study as well as the research questions has been answered through interviews with six individuals who are experts in the children's rights and who have information on the upcoming incorporation, they also have knowledge about the interventions that have been made and the challenges involved in the incorporation of the Convention of the rights of the child.      The result of the study shows that the expected changes that the interviewees had from incorporating the Convention of the Rights of the Child into Swedish legalisation were both positive and negative. The positive expectation is that the Convention will get more impact. That the best interests of the child will be tested in decisions that concern them and that they will be able to express an opinion to a greater extent than before. The negative expectations and challenges of incorporation are that the convention can be perceived undetermined and in itself does not constitute a basis for decision-making. It is therefore important that the provisions of the Convention continue to be transformed into national law. The interviewees also expressed a concern that the government's responsibility to ensure compliance with the Convention might transferred to the legal experts and that the work on transforming the Convention's provisions contingently stops.     The study also identifies the need of knowledge of the Convention of the Rights of the Child among the children. This will contribute to the positive effect that children will understand that they are carriers of rights. Furthermore the interviewees criticise the government’s decision to not incorporate the third additional protocol, optional protocol of the convention on the rights of the child on a communication procedure.

Background/aim: The purpose of this sociological study "Genus in the Child's Best Interest" was to, from the Administrative Court's decree about the child's own behavior, further clarify the concept of the child's best interest by studying how the concept is expressed in decrees with focus on genus. Theory: Three genus theories, to compare girls and boys, Mary John's power theory, the grown ups definition of what the reality is and what it should contain, and a labeling theory, where the people with power are the ones to define what's normal and what's not, have been used to analyze the result in this study. Method: A content analyses was used to analyze the decrees, with the focus on girls and boys between the ages of 12 to 19, where they have been forced into treatment by the law. Result: The concept of a child's best interest does make a difference between girls and boys in the decrees, and the girls have more power because they have more room to express themselves and are less responsible for their thoughts and actions. The concept is possible to use, but the definition is subjective and could be colored by the societies values and norms.