Q:

 What is Poverty?

A:

Poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity. It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society. It means not having enough to feed and cloth a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit. It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individual, households and communities. It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies living on marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation.

(UN Economic and Social Council, 1998)

Q:

How should poverty be measured?

A:

Poverty should be seen in multi-dimensional view. It is not just relating to lack of income, but also directly link with basic needs such as health, education, nutrition and shelter. Broader definitions encompass security and empowerment, meaning control over one’s own life which may be defined in various ways (e.g. political participation at either national or local level). Therefore, poverty should be measured by income-poverty measures and non-income poverty measures.

Q:

What is child poverty?

Child poverty is where children grow up:

A:

• in households with inadequate resources to provide for their material needs

• where families and communities are unable to protect them

• unable to develop their full potential and are, for example, uneducated or ill.

(Source: SCUK What is Child Poverty? Facts, Measurement and Conclusion: SC-UK briefing paper)

Q:

Why a larger proportion of children than adults live in poverty?

A:

This could be explained in many ways, for example by the fact that poor people tend to have more children, and that young families with children tend to be at the poorer end of the family-lifecycle.

Q:

Why does child poverty matter?

A:

Child poverty matters directly as children constitute a large share of the population and indirectly for future individual and national well-being. Children living in poverty often stay poor as they grow up. Today’s poor children are more likely to become tomorrow’s poor parents, and their children, in turn, are at greater risk of living in poverty.

Childhood malnutrition can impair long-term physical and mental development and capacity to learn; girls who are under nourished in childhood are more likely to have low birth weigh babies and to experience complications or die during childbirth; children who miss formal education may not get another opportunity to develop key skills and knowledge.

Q:

How will household poverty affect to children?

A:

Children suffer most from the adverse effects of family poverty. In many countries, poverty is concentrated among families with children, and children in poor families are more likely to experience hunger, disease, violence, and social stigma than children in better-off families. These children are more likely to take on income generating, domestic and child care responsibilities at a young age.

Q:

What are major principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child? Is the child poverty about child rights?

A:

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) gives legal expression to the notion that children have independent human rights. The CRC builds on four general principles:

• Non-discrimination

• Best interests of the Child

• Participation

• Survival and development.

(Source: Child Right Programming)

The definition of child poverty is in fact about child rights. Children must be seen and treated as right holders, and not just treated as an extension of their carers. With the idea of universality of human rights, a child rights approach also calls for inclusion of all children and for non-discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, class, religion, etc.

(Source: Koos Neefjes, SCUK Vietnam, 2002)

Q:

How Save the Children trying to tackle child poverty

A:

This can be divided into several small questions.

Save the Children has already played an important role in getting child poverty on the international agenda and in advocating for better understanding, measurement and monitoring of child poverty, and more effective ways to tackle it.

In particular, Save the Children work in three areas:

• Programmes: Save the Children works on eradicating child poverty through its programme work around the world. For e.g. HIV/AIDS prevention education work, investment in quality affordable education and health care, working to eradicate harmful child labour, working with disabled children and their communities, working with urban street children to provide information services and informal education classes

• Research: Current understandings and indicators of child poverty are inadequate. Save the Children is working to improve child poverty indicators and data on child poverty trends through a variety of research and study

• Advocacy: Solutions to child poverty are intimately linked to solutions to adult poverty. Much of Save the Children’s advocacy work addresses poverty issues generally, bringing child poverty to the forefront as appropriate.

(Source: What is child poverty? Facts, measurements and conditions)

Q:

What is child’s social capital

A:

Child social capital is about the social resources upon which children can draw to be safe and protected, be healthy, and be able to develop themselves in the widest sense. The primary social capital of children is obviously their family, and especially their main carer, who is in most cases the biological mother. At secondary level social capital of children is their friends and the families of their friends and the wider community, and including for example teachers. In addition, children may depend on a radically different form of social capital – for example, street children often depend on other street children, on special service provider, and sometimes on criminal networks who provide them with opportunities to acquire an income.

(Source: Koos Neefjes, SCUK Vietnam, 2002)

Q:

Which children need special care?

A:

In Vietnam, groups of children in especially difficult circumstances, who need special care, include the following:

• Disabled children, including victims of landmines and unexploded ordinance (UXO) that still litters much of the countryside, particularly in Central provinces.

• Children of migrants, who may lack access to services for lack of registration, and who may work more than others (see also subsection 3.3 and 3.4).

• Children who spend most of their time on the streets of cities.

• Children who are in conflict with the law.

• Child sex-workers.

• Children who are infected with HIV, and the unborn with a high risk to be infected.

• Ethnic minority children, especially from the medium sized and smaller ethnic minority groups in remote rural areas (see also subsection 3.1).

• Children who suffer from various forms of domestic violence, including sexual abuse.

• Children who are employed in sweat shops and larger industries and who may be subject to some of the ‘worst forms of child labour’.

• Orphans and abandoned children.