The Reconstructing Children’s Rights Institute is a multi-part series of conversations and resources for learning, information sharing and actionable next steps. The goal is to raise awareness and recognition of how racism, patriarchy, and power permeate the international child rights and child protection field. Building on Conversation #1, this session expands our political imagination by delving deeper into the international children’s rights and child protection space. If inequalities and injustices are apparent across wide swaths of humanitarian aid and international development, their roots in racism, neo-colonialism, and patriarchy are especially problematic in fields such as child rights and protection, where the roles of children and caregivers in their families and communities will vary from context to context. As the international development and humanitarian communities seek to create quick, cost-effective technical solutions, the likelihood of the imposition of conceptual and practice models that replicate oppressive, patriarchal, and racist norms is high. We must examine the incongruence of these models, programming and policy interventions and the ways in which their (mis)application can increase harm to children and families.
This discussion presupposes that historical storytelling is needed to understand children’s rights – What are the historical trajectories of the people, programmatic approaches, and policies operating in international humanitarian and development spaces? If white supremacy culture is identified by defensiveness, perfectionism, paternalism, and a sense of urgency, how are these translated within the international child protection and rights field?
