How do children’s rights play out in local contexts in relation of children’s work/child labour? This is addressed by Ginny Morrow in a presentation at the University of Leiden’s conference on 25 Years of the UNCRC.

1. “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

2. YOUNG LIVES LONGITUDINAL DESIGN
ABOUT YOUNG LIVES
• 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

3. YOUNG LIVES COHORT STUDY
Same age children at
different time points
Qualitative nested sample
1 2 3 4
AGES: 1 5 8 12 15
YOUNGER COHORT
Following 2,000 children
OLDER COHORT
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
Linked
school surveys

4. QualitativQeU reAsLeIaTArcThIVE RESEARCH
• 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

5. QualitativQeU reAsLeIaTArcThIVE RESEARCH
200+ case study children and young people
 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

6. 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

7. 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].

8. 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?

9. 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.”

10. Haymanot, rural Ethiopia
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.

11. In 2011, age 15, Haymanot was married
HAYMANOT, 2010
• 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.

12. 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.

13. REFERENCES
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.

14. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & THANK YOU
THANKS TO...
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.

15. FINDING OUT MORE…
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