‘Rights are everything we don't have’: clashing conceptions of vulnerability and agency in the daily lives of Rwandan children and youth

Abstract

Rights-based approaches have been presented as the panacea to working with children deemed to be ‘at risk’, by shifting the emphasis from children as vulnerable beneficiaries to children as active participants. While rights-based programming has facilitated a conceptual shift, it is less clear what has been achieved in practice. Based upon research conducted in Rwanda, this article explores the influence of rights-based discourses on interventions with children and youth, arguing there are clashing conceptions of vulnerability and agency. Instead of a predetermined package, rights need to be embedded within everyday life, drawing on the experiences of children.

Keywords:

• children's rights
• participation
• rights-based approaches
• everyday life
• Rwanda

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the School of Advanced Study for funding the doctoral research upon which this article is based and the Central Research Fund, University of London for partially funding fieldwork in Rwanda. In addition, the author offers sincere appreciation to CARE International, Save the Children UK and to colleagues on the NIPS evaluation: Tonya Thurman and Joseph Ntaganira. Above all, this work would not have been possible without the children and young people who generously participated in this research. Opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the organizations mentioned.

Notes

For more detailed accounts of the development of rights-based approaches, see Gready and Ensor (2005, pp. 1–44) and Sano (2000).

The concept of resiliency has been adopted from psychology by many other disciplines, including the social sciences to emphasize children as ‘competent social agents rather than inherently vulnerable beings that are wholly dependent on others for their survival and development’ (Boyden and Cooper 2007, pp. 1–3). This is not to deny the extremely challenging circumstances in which these children and young people are living but the notion of vulnerability ignores the many competencies and capacities that these children and young people possess in carrying out their daily lives (Skovdal and Campbell 2010, pp. 25–26).

Figures taken from Human Rights Watch (2003) and UNICEF. Available from: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/rwanda_statistics.html [Accessed 23 September 2009].

The 15 categories of OVC are: children living in households headed by children; children in foster care; street children; children living in centres; children in conflict with the law; children with disabilities; children affected by armed conflict; children who are sexually exploited and/or abused; working children; children affected/infected by HIV/AIDS; infants with their mothers in prison; children in very poor households; refugee and internally displaced children; children of single mothers; girls who are married before their majority.

Nkundabana is a Kinyarwanda word which means ‘I love children’.

Nkundabana has become a generic term for community volunteers working with children. The Nkundabana referred to here are not part of NIPS.

Rwanda is divided into a series of administrative units; 5 provinces, 30 districts, 418 sectors, 9165 cells and then the village level.