Climate change, human security and violent conflict

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(19)32540-1.pdf

A future for the world's children? A WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission

World development report 2007

Realizing the potential of Latin America and the Caribbean's (LAC) youth is essential not only to their well-being, but also to the long-term welfare of the whole region. Young people's families, communities, and governments as well as private, nonprofit, and international organizations, have a responsibility to help youth reach their potential. There have been many successes but also important failures. How to build on the successes and correct the failures is the subject of this report. This book has two objectives: to identify the at-risk youth in LAC, and to provide evidence-based guidance to policy makers in LAC countries that will help them to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their youth investments. The book concludes that governments can be more effective in preventing young people from engaging in risky behavior in the first place and also in assisting those who already are engaged in negative behavior. To support governments in this endeavor, the book provides a set of tools to inform and guide policy makers as they reform and implement programs for at-risk youth.

Youth at Risk in Latin America and the Caribbean: Understanding the Causes, Realizing the Potential

Children and young people's participation in public decision-making is now firmly on international and national agendas. This article concludes the special issue on such participation, by discussing three central issues for children and young people's participation: what is counted – or discounted – as legitimate forms of participation; the potential usefulness of theorisations of governance, citizenship and social capital; and how the roles of adults (participation workers) can be understood. The article celebrates the success of the rhetorical push for children and young people's participation, while suggesting that the tensions and dilemmas of current practice and policy need to be addressed by new and revitalised ideas and challenging theorisations.

/pdf/is-the-honeymoon-over-children-and-young-people-s-351h0spzcb.pdf

Is The Honeymoon Over? Children And Young People’s Participation In Public Decision-Making

In Nicaragua the rise of urban youth gangs has led the government to adopt a crime‐control approach that focuses on containing adolescent violence Yet efforts to foil youth gangs have been ineffectual, largely because the nature of gang membership is little understood This article presents the results of a qualitative study of youth gang membership in the capital city of Managua From participant observations and interviews with a cohort of youth gang members and a number of people closely attached to them, the study presents youth perspectives of gang membership in a way that underscores the dialectic between individual agency and the structural environments that impinge on youth choices The study concludes by arguing that policies aiming to deal with urban youth gangs in Nicaragua must accommodate the perspectives of marginalized urban youth and draw upon their capacity for individual and collective agency

https://www.democraticdialogue.com/DDpdfs/Maclure.JournalofYouthStudies.pdf

Youth Gangs in Nicaragua: Gang Membership as Structured Individualization

In enacting a legislative Code of Childhood and Adolescence in 1998, the Nicaraguan state formally endorsed the ideal of children's rights as being a central concern of public policy. Yet, the state has done little to fulfil this commitment. In part this is the result of severe fiscal constraints, which have led to reduced public expenditures and the downsizing of social services, especially those directed towards children and youth. In part, however, there are also indications of state reluctance to actively implement the principles of change as outlined by the Code. This has been reflected in the government's reactionary response to fears of growing youth violence, and its unwillingness to collaborate with local civic groups in dealing with youth crime. We surmise therefore that, while the Code may have served to enhance state legitimacy, the cause of children's rights remains a residual policy issue in Nicaragua.

http://www.democraticdialogue.com/DDpdfs/Maclure.ThirdWorld.pdf

Children's rights as residual social policy in Nicaragua: state priorities and the Code of Childhood and Adolescence

Since Nicaragua's endorsement of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the legislative passage of its own Code of Childhood and Adolescence, improvements in the welfare of marginalised youth have depended largely on community-based actions that are sponsored by NGOs and civic groups, many of which function in tangent with municipal government authorities and international aid agencies. In this article we review three community initiatives that have aimed at resolving problems associated with youth alienation and violence in a poor, heavily populated district of Managua. While some modest successes have been achieved, these relatively isolated initiatives have had no evident effect on either the magnitude or the systemic nature of youth marginalisation in Managua. In a context in which the central state is severely constrained by fiscal weakness and corporatist traditions, it is questionable whether in fact the organs of civil society do in fact possess the organisational capacity to generate the structural reforms necessary for the advancement of children's rights at community levels. Nevertheless, despite the amorphous nature of much of civil society in Nicaragua, in the long run children's rights legislation may help to foster growing solidarity among disparate civic forces working to improve the bleak livelihoods of many children.

http://www.democraticdialogue.com/DDpdfs/Maclure.JournalLatin.pdf

Children's Rights and the Tenuousness of Local Coalitions: A Case Study in Nicaragua

In many Latin American countries, stringent crime control measures have failed to stem high levels of youth crime and violence. As a consequence, there is burgeoning interest in the notion of youth social capital as a basis for policies and programmes designed to enhance the rights of young people living in circumstances of poverty and risk. Yet there is little knowledge of existing sources of youth social capital in poor urban communities in Latin America. To address this gap, the authors conducted an inquiry into the sources and aspects of youth social capital in one low-income urban neighbourhood in Nicaragua.The study revealed that despite a local context fraught with the effects of poverty, youth experienced varying benefits from family and peer relationships, and from their differentiated associations with school, church, and places of work. In recognition of these existing sources of local support, we argue that youth social capital formation, particularly through family assistance and investments in schooling, has considerable merit as both a means and an end of community development strategies in low-income neighbourhoods. We acknowledge, however, that social capital formation as a basis of youth policies and programmes must be founded on a broad civic and political commitment to children’s rights which, as yet, is far from evident in Nicaragua.

Melvin Sotelo

Papers

Youth Gangs in Nicaragua: Gang Membership as Structured Individualization

Children's rights as residual social policy in Nicaragua: state priorities and the Code of Childhood and Adolescence

Children's Rights and the Tenuousness of Local Coalitions: A Case Study in Nicaragua

Youth Social Capital Formation in Nicaragua

Social policies and marginalized urban youth: centrist prescriptions and divergent practices