Globalization and the Commercialization of Childhood - Assignment Example

Children’s Rights Section I 1. Many multinational corporations shift production to poorer countries in the global south where we find mostly women and young children working making less than $1 a day. Why do corporations choose this option? Please describe and then critique the arguments for and against being sure to include information covered in the Children and Labor Rights unit in making your critique. The poorer countries offer cheap labor unlike the Northern nations where the workers demand higher wages and more benefits. This therefore means that these multinationals are incurring fewer expenses and bagging in a lot of profit which enables them expand even more. In these poorer nations, the people are desperate to make ends meet. They are in debt; the nations are in debt and hence resort to taking up the only offer of employment they get no matter how meager it is to them at least it provides them with daily food. The people targeted are unlikely to raise complaints as a result of their minority status in the community as well as the discrimination they face as they are regarded as weak. This is further cemented by the fact that majority of these women and children are uneducated and hence cannot fight for their rights including right to fair treatment, better working conditions and wages. This silence leads to further exploitation by the multinational companies (Punch, 2002). Multinational companies just like any other business has the goal of attaining maximum profits at reduced costs. They therefore do not see this as a way to exploit the women and children and their labor rights but they regard is as a way to meet business goals. As mentioned above, the women and children have minimal education and professional skills and hence these multinational companies are giving them a chance at redeeming themselves from the societal discrimination and dependence on their husbands and fathers even if they are earning less money (Darling & Turkki, 2009). 2. The process of globalization articulates itself in historical phases, each of which is characterized by specific factors, conditions and forces. Sterns in “Globalization and Childhoods” argues that there are four different forms of globalizations. List the four forms of globalizations and the important characteristics of each one The first of the types of globalization is the economic globalization. This refers to dealing with economic issues that affect the whole globe such as the multinational companies with their cheaper labor and extensive transportation systems. With globalization comes the issue of increased levels of trade between nations, the markets become much freer and especially so with the developmental loans meant to assist developments of the less developed nations (Kanner, 2005). Cultural globalization is another form of globalization which deals with how consumerism for example has developed throughout the decades, how body images are viewed across the globe and what they mean to each culture, issue of racism and other unequal opportunities and how they can be handled across different cultures as well as westernizations and its effects among others. Migration is another form of globalization which deals with movement of people from one location to another and in this case their movement across nations and continents. What this leads to is an assimilation of cultures of a clash of civilization and cultures such as with the Latinos and Asians moving to the US. Migration may also cause violence as well as a lack of preservation of the home’s culture. Lastly are the children’s rights and the international standards to foster them. With globalization, there are increased cases of child labor and the constant fights for the rights of the children, their health as well as even their economic protection for future purposes. Globalization has also brought about a decline infant and mortality rates in other nations (Kanner, 2005). 3. Without medical intervention, a HIV-Positive mother can transmit the virus to her baby 30-40% of the time. Describe 3 routes by which she may transmit the virus to her baby. Then, list the interventions used to prevent mother to child transmission. What is the risk of the baby contracting HIV if all 4 measures are used correctly HIV is transmitted from mother to child during the process of giving birth, during pregnancy or even during breastfeeding after the baby has already been born. These can however be prevented through different interventions. After birth for a period of around 6 weeks, children of HIV mothers should be given medication to protect them from infection that may have been passed during birth. Testing for the virus in these children should be done between 2 and 3 weeks after the child is born and a follow up in 4 months. The other intervention is to avoid breastfeeding the baby and use formula milk instead to prevent passing the infection. All these interventions can be carried out simultaneous or following each other according to the requirements of the physician. This will however mean faithful following of the interventions mentioned above strictly including the nutrition. If the interventions are followed faithfully, over 50% of the children born with the virus will avoid dying before the age of 2 years. This represents over 70% of the children born with HIV who will survive past the 2 years. Research by UNICEF indicates that even though the children may have undergone the interventions, the parents should ensure that they constantly check from other diseases that might kill them as a result of reduced immunity which is brought about by the virus such as respiratory infections, malaria, TB, under nutrition among others (UNICEF Stocktaking Report, 2013). 4. Today millions of children all over the world, including those in Canada, live in poverty. What are the mechanisms that underlie the persistence of poverty? What types of interventions have been tried or could be tried? What has been effective and what has not? Half of the world is wallowing with poverty and they are living on less than $2 in a day. This poverty is brought about by the lack of equitable distribution of opportunities among the world’s population. A few people own high stakes and money as well as assets in the world while the majority continues to struggle to share the remaining meager percentage. The rich therefore with their resources continue to own the power and control the wealth and hence acquire more in the process and the little the rest have continues to dwindle. There is inequality in the education, in health care, social capital, rapid population growth and dwindling resources and environmental degradation among many other reasons (Woodhead, Dornan & Murray, 2014). There were social reforms carried out in the 1900s to extend social services to the people and assist the working class as well as the immigrants but they were not enough and not really successful. Child reformers to save children from the effects of poverty came into light to protect the rights of children in the mid-19th Century but this did also not assist greatly as expected. Further reforms established dealt with children’s education and their equality, establishment of public school funding, handling and elimination of the unequal payment system, improving health care as well as establishing housing that were standard to eliminate homelessness but poverty is still looming. The newer method to eliminate the economic inequality includes taxation, increasing of wages and not putting much effort into social stratification. This will also reduce the social problems associated with poverty as well (Woodhead, Dornan & Murray, 2014). Section II 1. Explain and evaluate the arguments for and against Canada’s obligations to refugees and refugee claimants particularly children, keeping in mind our past commitments to refugees and our current acceptance levels. When it comes to refugees, it is the children who suffer the most and especially if strict policies and laws against refugees as a result of national security are being enforced. The children will lack all the rights that are accorded to children including the right to education, security, protection, hard labor among many others if they are returned back to their countries of origin with the low acceptance levels in these nations (Punch, 2002). Canada has no obligation to keep the refugees and cater for them as it is additional burden to the nation what with the increase in immigrants into the nation. The economy and security of the nation will continue to suffer if these refugees are allowed to stay in the nation as they will only continue to increase what with all the people seeking asylum into the nation from war-torn countries. The country will be unable to sustain them and its citizens not to mention the immigrants at the same time and hence the reason it has to minimize its acceptance levels of the refugees. The children can however try to be adopted into the system if the parents agree in order to end their suffering from the constant state of instability in their lives and in order to ensure they get good and quality education, proper health care and will grow up to be independent future members of the society. They are less of a burden than harboring all the refugees and they can be considered part of the immigrants. How should these arguments inform our policies regarding our acceptance and admission of refugees? Based on the above argument about the refugees being granted or denied permission to stay in a country but their children being allowed for their own security and ensure their rights are fulfilled, nations handling refugees such as Canada and Kenya among other should come up with clearly defined and explained policies about this decision. The policies are necessary to indicate that these nations accept children of refugees to remain in the nation under the custody of the government but denies the admission and acceptance of the parents into the country unless those with really young babies who cannot be left without their guardians. This way, the governments will have minimized their burden of handling refugees while at the same time ensure that the welfare of the children, their safety and rights will be safeguarded and they will grow up with the necessary stability in their lives (Darling & Turkki, 2009). The policies should however not come out openly as denying the refuges shelter and security in their time of need but should appear to put the security and the needs of the citizens ahead of others as they are the tax payers and hence control the nation with their money. This should be communicated in a clear language which will not lead into implication of discrimination of the refugees but rather as a way to protect the citizens and offer a better future for the children of the refugees that they lack when they remain refuges with no permanent home and stability to offer their children. Should states have an obligation to accept refugees fleeing from repression and deprivation in their countries of origins as a means of protecting basic rights particularly those of children, why or why not? States do not have an obligation to accept refugees but they however can be persuaded to accept them based on the human rights. The obligation however only comes in when there are children involved because they are young, helpless and need to be protected as well as provided with their basic rights. All this is a way to safeguard the globe in the future by protecting its next generation. Children are innocent parties’ when it comes to the fights and tussles that cause people to be refugees. They have no understanding of what is happening and are therefore most traumatized by having their lives uprooted and start to be moved from one place to the other. In a bid to protect these innocent children and provide a stable environment that will minimize their trauma, help them gain education, good and quality health care, provide safety among other rights, it is the obligation of states to accept certain refugees (Darling & Turkki, 2009). Acceptance of refugees particularly children will mean that the states will still be able to maintain their sense of security as children are harmless as well as minimize the extra economic and social burden it would have endured from handling the whole lot of refugees and others that may come as a result of the acceptance of the first groups. Children are minimal effort to handle, they can easily and quickly assimilate into the new culture and hence pose lesser risks and safeguard a future generation that may rebuild their nation in the future. 2. Discuss the use of children as soldiers including what types of activities do child soldiers participate in? Child soldiers are children that are below the age of 18 years but who are forced to participate in armed conflict in different capacities. There are used for different activities such as cooking, being messengers, for sexual purposes as well as carrying arms. Furthermore, they are taken to act as human shields for the rest of the soldiers or kill people they are familiar with without their knowledge such as their family members. Since they are children and regarded as innocent by many, they are used as spies and for scouting purposes, to lay down mines and other explosives without being seen or suspected as well as for other logistical supports. These children are trained to perform the dirty jobs of other soldiers which they cannot perform on their own for fear of being seen or their plans being unveiled. By using the children therefore as decoys, these terrorists and soldiers are able to destroy more people and property without being found easily or being quickly suspected or harmed and especially when they use the children as human shields knowing they cannot be harmed as they are innocent. Where, why, when and how are child soldiers involved in combat? Children become child soldiers through two main ways: volunteering and being forced. For the children that volunteer to be child soldiers, they voluntarily move to the soldier’ camps and enlist as a way to survive during the war and especially if they will be given less dangerous roles such as cooking or being sexual slaves and wives. Others volunteer as a way to escape the poverty that is brought about by the war in their area. With war, food becomes scarce and people are unable to work in order to acquire other basic amenities or their movement is curtailed by the constant fighting and killing. Children therefore see becoming child soldiers as redeeming them from such a life as they will receive the basic amenities of food and shelter. The other group is the one that is forced which is carried out through them being abducted from their families and taken to the soldier’s camps. They are taken once their families are killed or tortured and thy have no alternative but comply for fear of undergoing the same treatment or due to numbness with shock that prevents their resistance (Klasen, et al., 2010). To what extent is the use of child soldiers a problem today? Taking of child soldiers is being regarded as a bad thing by the NGOs such as UNICEF, Amnesty International among many other in conjunction with governments because it against the rights of children. Children taken as child soldiers suffer psychological breakdowns such as trauma, PTSD, depression among other anti-social behaviors (Betancourt, et al. 2010). They are also likely to kill other people and since they are trained to do so, they are therefore regarded as walking machine guns and can kill anyone. This is especially the case because these child soldiers in order to survive at this are pumped full of drugs and hence operate under commands and without any conscience. They are raped and this leads to them withdrawing, other gets pregnant and have to live with the scars of forced abortions or miscarriages, gaining high levels of anger, becoming hostile, increased lack of confidence and lack of prosocial attitude. They are kept from school, not offered medical help among other rights being denied from them. All these are a concern in today’s living and hence the reason for the intense advocacy on elimination of child soldiers and offering them the assistance they may be requiring once they are redeemed. Are they able to be rehabilitated and or should they be imprisoned like Omar Khadr? Some of these child soldiers are able to be rehabilitated and especially those that were forced to become child soldier and who have not been actively involved in the combat through fighting alongside the rebels and soldiers. The groups that can be rehabilitated include those who were doing the cooking and cleaning, acting as wives and sexual objects, those purely spying, scouting or even handling the logistics support. The groups that were however actively involved in the explosives as well as those that voluntarily trained and fought in the field as soldiers cannot be rehabilitated and are probably really dangerous not only to themselves as well as others. They are joined by another group that may not be rehabilitated as they are too far gone with the drugs addiction and have developed serious psychological disorders and mental breakdowns. Those imprisoned should be those that volunteered to be active in war, were not taking drugs as a way to force them to fight and kill people and those that still want to continue killing. This group ought to be imprisoned and tried as adults being charged with manslaughter and murders. References Betancourt, T. et al. (2010, August). Sierra Leone's Former Child Soldiers: A Follow-up Study of Psychosocial Adjustment and Community Reintegration. Child Development, 81(4): 107- 1095. Darling, C. & Turkki, K. (2009, February). Global Family Concerns and the Role of Family Life Education: An Ecosystemic Analysis. Family Relations, 58(1): 14-17. Kanner, D. (2005). Globalization and the Commercialization of Childhood. Tikkun, 20: 49-51. Klasen, F., Daniels, J., Oettingen, G., Post, M. & Hoyer, C. (2010, July/ August). Posttraumatic Resilience in Former Ugandan Child Soldiers. Child Development, 81(4): 1096-1113. Punch, S. (2002). Migration Projects: Children on the Move for Work and Education. Scotland: University of Stirling. UNICEF Stocktaking Report. (2013). Towards an AIDS-Free Generation. New York: UNICEF. Woodhead, M., Dornan, P. & Murray, H. (2014). What Inequality means for Children. The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 22(3): 467-501. Read More