Development can be defined in many ways, but here is taken to be an explicit process involving resources, policies, services, and programs deployed by the state and other actors with the aim of achieving economic growth and social wellbeing for a given population. International development refers to initiatives advancing this agenda in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) specifically. It is widely acknowledged that there is good reason to prioritize children (defined as all individuals under the age of eighteen) in such processes, and the young have now become central to the international development agenda and to national development policies throughout the world. This trend reflects the high proportion of young people relative to total population across many LMICs, recognition of the urgent need to ameliorate the dire conditions faced by countless boys and girls in these settings, and a dramatic expansion of child-focused policies, services, and interventions in recent decades.

Two distinct arguments are advanced for channeling development efforts toward the young. The first is shaped by notions of universal justice and human rights and works from the premise that children are inherently vulnerable and dependent and are hence especially deserving of support and protection. They are marked out from other generations as carriers of a distinct set of rights to be safeguarded by designated duty bearers, particularly states and parents. This case finds expression in international child-rights instruments developed over the course of the twentieth century, culminating in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Here, prioritizing the young in development processes is about applying the concept of rights to achieve agreed international standards for all children everywhere with regard to their survival, development, protection, and participation. The second line of reasoning highlights the threat to life and developmental potential resulting from poverty and other preventable risks to children in LMICs. The first thousand days of life are underlined as the most crucial for child survival and development; recovery from nutritional deprivation or other shocks experienced during this period, it is argued, is highly unlikely, if not impossible. Economists have pursued this line of thinking further in the application of the human-capital framework by underscoring the consequences of early-life deprivations for adult productivity, thereby also drawing attention to the implications for national economic prospects; thus, this particular model is as much about national interests as about the wellbeing of the current generation of young.

History of Intervention

Children have now become prominent “clients” of international development discourse and intervention. The first important milestone in this process was the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Drawn up by Eglantyne Jebb, founder of Save the Children, it was adopted by the League of Nations in 1924. The declaration enshrined the twin principles that still guide most policies today: that children are especially deserving of assistance and consequently owed the best that humankind has to offer; and that this entitlement applies equally to all and overrides considerations of “race, nationality or creed.” In 1959 the UN General Assembly adopted an expanded Declaration of the Rights of the Child that contained several new provisions, for example, the right to a name and nationality, and for the first time an entitlement to services such as education and health care was stipulated. But this instrument was not binding on states and so was largely symbolic. Twenty years later, child advocates, researchers, and practitioners used the impetus behind the International Year of the Child (1979) to enhance political and policy commitment to children. They employed research evidence and advocacy to stress the range, magnitude, and severity of problems that boys and girls confronted globally, exposing many threats to child wellbeing, for example, sexual abuse and workplace exploitation, that had previously been largely overlooked in policy. The year 1979 represented an important turning point in international efforts to improve children's lives, laying the foundations for a multitude of child-focused human rights and development initiatives in the 1980s.

Principally as a result of the leadership of UNICEF, as well as of commitments by an array of national, international, bilateral, and nongovernmental bodies, international efforts focused initially on child survival. At this time, over half of all morbidity and mortality among children in LMICs was caused by just six common conditions: diarrheal disease, measles, tetanus, pneumonia, and whooping cough, which in turn were frequently exacerbated by poor nutrition. It was reasoned that wealthy countries already possessed inexpensive means of addressing virtually all of these ailments, including cheap oral rehydration therapy, which was vital in tackling much of the dehydration associated with diarrheal diseases, and vaccines against some of the most virulent conditions. But only 15 percent or so of children in LMICs were immunized at this time; likewise, oral rehydration therapy was seldom available to the children in greatest need of it. A portfolio of interventions was proposed: regular growth monitoring to check individual wellbeing; oral rehydration therapy to treat diarrhea; breastfeeding; and immunization against tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, and measles. The expanded program on immunization was particularly successful and coverage rates in some LMICs soon rose to 60 percent or more.

These advances were impressive given the wider political–economic context at that time. Following the international debt crisis, many LMICs were in deep recession. Harsh structural adjustment programs applied by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in return for loans to countries in economic crisis seriously undermined public expenditure on the social sector. Several international agencies called for the shielding of basic services for children and the implementation of economic adjustment “with a human face.” Their campaigns had some success and structural adjustment programs have now been largely replaced by poverty-reduction strategy papers, which ensure a greater focus on poverty reduction and broad-based growth by incorporating plans for social policies and programs alongside macroeconomic structural measures. Current World Bank guidelines require analysis of the effect of adjustment programs on the poor and, in many countries, compensatory measures have been introduced.

For some practitioners and advocates, promises made at this time by governments and international agencies were insufficient as a guarantee of child survival and wellbeing. Legally binding on states parties to the treaty, the CRC was advanced as the most effective mechanism for ensuring that governments would make available the resources, skills, and contributions that were necessary to their maximum capacity for the survival, protection, participation, and development of the young. The CRC recognizes that children have a distinct set of rights and lays out a comprehensive framework for the realization of these rights. Even though it is intended to apply to all children equally and to address all aspects of their lives, including their right to participate in the decisions and administrative processes affecting them, most of the articles concern the protection of boys and girls living in especially difficult circumstances, such as those who are separated from their natal family or exposed to abuse, exploitation, or neglect.

Alongside efforts to get the CRC ratified and to improve child survival, school education began to move up the list of international development priorities. In fact, education soon came to be seen as the single most important channel for both individual and national development, essential for individual and household poverty reduction and social mobility as well as for national economic growth. In the declaration that emerged out of the World Conference on Education for All (at Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990) education was reaffirmed as a right, with basic education to be made accessible to all children and illiteracy to be massively reduced by the end of the decade. The Education for All movement highlighted the need to provide for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children and to eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education. Efforts to accomplish these goals have led to the dramatic expansion of education systems globally, together with an international push for universal access.

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the international community mounted one final initiative, the United Nations Millennium Declaration and associated Millennium Development Goals. Laid down in 2000, the goals comprised eight targets that were to be met by 2015, with progress in children's wellbeing a central concern. These targets encompassed the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; the achievement of universal primary education and gender equality; improvement in maternal health; a reduction in child mortality and in HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; safeguarding of environmental sustainability; and the advancement of a global partnership for development. The Millennium Development Goals led to the release of considerable resources for LMICs, benefiting countless children. Thus, for example, according to UNICEF's 2014 State of the World's Children report, death from measles among children under the age of five decreased from 482,000 in 2000 to 86,000 in 2012; improved nutrition has resulted in a 37 percent drop in stunting since 1990. Likewise UNESCO's 2015 Global Monitoring Report, Education for All 2000–2015 (2015), indicates that primary school enrollment rates increased from 84 percent in 1999 to 93 percent in 2015 and that the number of out-of-school children and adolescents decreased from 204 million to 121 million.

In the twenty-first century, international development interventions have occurred in the context of consistent national economic growth across many LMICs. Growth has been championed as the second engine of change for children after service provision and other measures, the claim being that it will lead to the leveling of all children, including the poor, through enhanced individual capabilities, expanded economic opportunities, and effective social provision. Yet growth is not a given, as has been apparent from the recent global economic downturn, and policy is not always effective at reaching the poorest or socially most marginalized. Indeed, as the 2015 Millennium Development Goals end date drew closer, the international community came to recognize that many of the targets were not going to be met, and development efforts began to concentrate on advancing a post-2015 agenda aligned with a new set of Sustainable Development Goals.

Depoliticization and Decontextualization of Childhood

Despite many important gains, the impacts of international development on the lives of children in LMICs have been complex and not always beneficial. Thus, the initial push for services focused on infrastructure, supplies, and other inputs, with delivery far less effective. So, for example, while significant progress was made on school enrollment and access, there continue to be major shortcomings in education quality and relevance. Key education objectives associated with both the Millennium Development Goals and Education for All have yet to be attained. In thirty-two countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, every fifth child enrolled in school will not reach the last grade. Girls remain at greater risk of never enrolling in school, whereas boys are more likely to leave early.

Most interventions in LMICs are modeled on approaches designed in the global North. When they are applied in resource-poor contexts with very different social and cultural values, these approaches can be entirely inappropriate. Thus, services tend to be organized in a way that disregards the complex realities of many children's lives. For example, compulsory full-time formal education does not take into account that many children have work and social responsibilities. Services are divided into sectoral silos, health, social welfare, and education generally being the ones most relevant for children. This way of organizing provision ignores important research evidence that highlights the interaction between and mutual reinforcement of children's development across different domains such as physical health and growth, cognition, and socioemotional competencies. These services tend to be segmented further by age and developmental stage—early, middle, and late childhood being separated out from each other with distinct policy goals and distinct platforms and modes of delivery. This additional segmentation fails to take account of the vital relationship between early-life experiences and later child-development outcomes and the importance of scaffolding provision accordingly. Similarly, child-protection interventions for boys and girls who are deemed to be at particular risk often divide children into synthetic categories (institutionalized children, child laborers, trafficked children, child sex workers, etc.) that reflect the inventory of special protection articles delineated in the CRC. Children are singled out and labeled as trafficked, exploited, or abused and thereby marked as different from others. Protection typically involves remedial measures tailored to these specific groups, often with the unintended consequence of accentuating their stigmatization and social isolation.

With its focus on economic growth, technocratic solutions, and normative goals framed as human rights, development discourse and intervention tends to negate the powerful structural constraints that bear down on countless children in LMICs. For instance, even though education is regarded by policy makers as the prime means for reducing inequalities, ensuring social mobility, and achieving broader societal development, it has been signaled as a “contradictory resource” (Levinson, Foley, and Holland 1996) as it often merely reproduces existing inequalities and can lead to the emergence of new forms of inequality. This is the case where poor families make vast economic sacrifices to enable their children to attend what are, in practice, poor-quality schools. It also applies in the growing number of countries where parallel public and private education systems operate in favor of children from wealthier households. Aggregate statistics on child survival and wellbeing conceal huge gaps and inequalities between the major regions of the world, in many cases between children living in rural and urban areas in the same country and between those who belong to different ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic groups. For example, UNICEF's report on The State of the World's Children 2014 in Numbers (2014) indicates that, while the number of deaths of those under the age of five has declined to a third in South Asia (from 5.8 million in 1970 to 2.1 million in 2012), children from the more well-off households are still up to four times more likely to be treated for diarrhea than children from poor families. Such findings reveal that societal development is an inherently political process, which under global capitalism has become associated with rising inequalities and an increasing concentration of resources in the hands of urban elites.

Development as Discourse Constituting New Subjects

Much attention has been given to the material outcomes of international development, but there has been less theorization of the ways in which development as practice and ideology transforms how children are constituted as subjects (Hujismans et al. 2014). Possibly one of the most powerful impacts has been widespread acceptance of the conception of childhood promulgated by the CRC and similar international development initiatives. Though the CRC calls for respect for diverse beliefs and values, in reality, with education privileged over work, family over street life, and consumerism over productivity (Montgomery 2009, 7), this conception embodies a strong normative understanding of what a proper childhood should be. This understanding coheres strongly with a neoliberal worldview and fails to take account of the varied social, economic, and cultural contexts in which children live. Practically, the spread of this neoliberal ideal has radically transformed children's roles, aspirations, and relationships with adults. Symbolically, it has raised the stakes around childhood, romanticizing it as a time free from responsibility or hardship and instrumentalizing it as the source of social and economic advancement in individuals, their families, and societies.

By emphasizing children's dependence on adult duty bearers, this ideal fails to acknowledge the interdependence of generations or the significance of children's social and economic contributions, especially in times of adversity. Nor does it recognize the pride that many young people gain from their contributions. The global advance of this ideal has given rise to contradictory trends. The expansion of formal schooling has massively elevated education ambitions among children and adults alike, which is linked to a desire for improved future livelihoods. So today countless boys and girls throughout the world struggle to meet competing demands on their time, combining formal education with paid and unpaid work and social care. Indeed, formal education is often a cause of child work insofar as many children need to earn income to pay for uniforms, utensils, and transport to and from school. Yet, simultaneously, children are increasingly being withdrawn from work to attend school, some even moving out of the natal home to access higher-status education institutions elsewhere. Along the way, many young people are becoming progressively more dependent on their seniors and less able to contribute to the domestic economy. Life skills that were once learned within homes and communities through multigenerational kin networks of cooperation are now being replaced by academic competencies taught in institutional settings. But, more than this, school education has begun to devalue unskilled manual rural labor in favor of urban white-collar jobs, so that young people who fall short on the latter commonly suffer a sense of failure and shame.

These trends are occurring at a time when macrolevel economic growth no longer guarantees jobs for the young. Youth unemployment and underemployment has reached a crisis point globally and, together with neoliberal restructuring, this has been shown to impede young people's transition to social adulthood. In some cases, skills that once supported this transition have been rendered obsolete, while weaknesses in the education system mean that numerous young people are unable to acquire the competencies needed for a modern economy. Thus, current policies, such as some of those around education and child work, which are out of step with wider developments, can unintentionally exacerbate children's difficulties. The disjuncture between young people's aspirations and outcomes is an important theme in recent scholarship (e.g., Jeffrey and McDowell 2004), as well as a rising concern for decision makers who fear adverse social and political consequences.

Most recently, there has been growing emphasis on the idea that the failure of parents and families to fulfill their role as duty bearers is one of the primary threats to child wellbeing. Improvements in child life that were once thought to depend on economic restructuring and social investments are now believed to depend additionally on reforming outmoded, seemingly “harmful,” values and practices. Accordingly, the concern in international development has shifted toward engineered cultural change in an attempt to refashion childhood in line with the idealized neoliberal conception. So, for example, parental ignorance or neglect of children's needs, rather than poor-quality services, are commonly blamed for low levels of service uptake. In this way, so-called traditional cultures are being problematized as bastions of conservatism harboring strong antimarket and antidemocratic inclinations (Weisner 2000, 141) that obstruct individual achievement, accumulation, and wealth. Moreover they are censured for embracing specific practices, such as independent child migration for fosterage, child work, or child marriage, which are condemned as inherently detrimental to children and singled out for elimination. In other words, the suffering of children is increasingly regarded as a moral failing of their cultures and societies. More and more, this discourse is homing in on the detrimental consequences for women and girls that are derived from patriarchal norms, values, and practices that perpetuate gender discrimination. The grounds given for securing gender equality are not simply human rights, but also “smart economics,” inasmuch as discrimination is regarded as inimical to economic advancement. LMIC governments have responded to calls to eliminate “harmful traditional practices” with interventions that range from parenting classes, public education, campaigns, and monitoring schemes, to penalties for infractions.

Critics of the “harmful practices” discourse deplore its emphasis on the private sphere, on individuals and families, and on attitudes and behavior. Child-rights activism is held as complicit in shifting the focus from class to identity group, from political economy to culture (White 2002), with efforts to achieve justice for children accentuating recognition rather than redistribution. Some have argued that this cultural turn reflects “the grand project of bourgeois civilization” (Bernstein 2005). Observing the interactions between state delegates and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which monitors compliance with the CRC, Harris-Short (2003) notes how elites from LMICs regularly draw a dividing line between the state, on the one hand, and the populace, on the other. The modern, progressive state is commonly depicted as engaged in a difficult struggle to “enlighten the masses” and to eradicate a host of “backward” customs and practices against a tide of tradition and culture. These interactions epitomize the ideology and praxis of international development, in which elites in aid donor and recipient countries promote economic growth and ignore inequality, in effect absolving themselves of responsibility for children's wellbeing and mandating intervention to uphold the global conception of childhood.

Anthropological and historical research has demonstrated that what is now promoted as the most appropriate childhood for all children is in fact a product of the particular political–economic and sociocultural conditions that prevailed in Europe and Northern America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By asserting globalized child rights that are grounded in these particular historical conditions, rather than lived experience, this ideal treats children as an autonomous demographic category detached from social context and relations. In doing so, it deploys numerous stereotypical representations that risk leading to inappropriate and even injurious policies. Through its links to the neoliberal framework, this way of thinking about and providing for children can be seen as bolstering a commitment to a capitalist world order with perpetual economic growth at its heart. In a situation of increasing deregulation of national economies, informalization of labor, and decline in employment opportunities, the sustainability of this model is questionable. Yet children everywhere are becoming party to this discourse, largely because of its compelling social mobility narrative. Ethnographies from the global South demonstrate that children and young people are increasingly constructing their identities and social worlds via school achievement, leisure pursuits, the consumption of goods and urban lifestyles more generally (Liechty 1995). This process has shaped new subjectivities among children and youth, for whom success is increasingly measured through the ability to access these fruits of modernity.

SEE ALSO: Human Rights; Global Health; Structural Adjustment Policies; Educational Issues in Development; Children and Childhood, Anthropological Study of; Children and Childhood, Anthropological Study of