The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) recognizes and seeks to support four categories of rights for children: provision, prevention, protection, and participation. These categories refer to the provision of such things as food, housing, and education that allow growth and development; prevention, through law, of the abuse of children or infringement on their rights; intervention to protect children against exploitation and abuse once those rights have been violated; and the participation of children in decisions being made on their behalf. In 1990, Vietnam became the first country in Asia to ratify the convention.
The central question of Rachel Burr's book is, “Does the UNCRC make sense for Viet Nam?” The book's central contribution is to increase the participation of children called for by that convention.
With a background in anthropology and social work, Rachel Burr brings the UNCRC into conversation with the stories, hopes, and daily lives of children she came to know during two years of ethnographic research. Her work focuses on three groups that aid organizations considered marginalized and in need of special protection: children who sell postcards and shine shoes on the streets of Hanoi, children who live in orphanages, and children in reform schools. This ethnography in itself is enough to make the book required reading for anyone working with children, or with nongovernmental organizations whose actions affect children and families in Vietnam—or, I suspect, most anywhere. The voices of the children are diverse, complex, and ring true. Indeed, if you lived in Hanoi in the 1990s, you may recognize some of these children despite their pseudonyms.
Burr gives a brief history of changing concepts of childhood, provokes thought about the interventions of international aid organizations, explores what she calls the “difficult and disconcerting” subject of child labor, and then engages us with the lives and stories of children working on the streets of Hanoi. How are these children to be thought of, she asks. As unfortunate innocents, to be protected? As social evils, to be punished or corrected? Or as young members of a society who are contributing to the survival of their families and the economy of their country? For Burr, they are, for the most part, the last. She wishes that the conditions of their lives could be different, but locates the “problem” to be addressed not in the individual child but in poverty and the injustices of the global economy.
When well meaning nongovernmental organizations and government agencies, driven by abstract and locally inappropriate standards of child welfare or by funder fashions, locate the problem in the individual child, they risk doing more harm than good, Burr cautions. As an example, she describes the “repatriation” program of 1996, which focused on sending children back to their rural homes. She calls the program a “disaster” from the point of view of the children and their families, as the families had to cope both with an extra mouth to feed and with the loss of income that the child working in Hanoi would regularly send home—income badly needed for food, clothing, shelter, medicine, or education for other siblings.
Burr raises other questions about the intervention of foreign agencies, while being careful to recognize distinctions among such groups. She notes that the restructuring demanded by the World Bank pushed 750,000 Vietnamese children out of secondary schools. She observes the effects of site visits by nongovernmental organization program staff, and explores confusions caused by concepts that do not translate well, despite apparently corresponding words. Sometimes, Burr also notes, inappropriate action is a matter of the ignorance born of privilege and distance, whether foreign or Vietnamese. Yet she argues that the failure to understand is “not so much about cultural misunderstanding as about operating with imperialistic notions of power.”
Burr offers some alternative ways of thinking about children. On the theoretical level, she draws attention to other possible ways of framing child rights, such as the Organization of African Unity's emphasis on responsibilities as well as rights. Responsibilities are also highlighted in Vietnam's National Law for Children, which Burr excerpts: “[one expectation for Vietnamese children is] to show love, respect and piety toward grandparents and parents, politeness toward adults, affection toward younger children and solidarity toward friends.”
On a practical level, she underscores her point that the problem is located in the global economy by citing studies that show that when the price of rice increases, child labor decreases. She points to the Brazilian model of compensating farmers who keep their children in school, and praises several small projects in Hanoi, such as Hoa Sua, a bakery and restaurant that offers on-the-job training for street children.
There is much in this book for readers who are interested not only in children, development, and the intersections of local and global, but also in discipline, incarceration, gender, the creation of social networks on the streets and in reform school, and questions of relations shaped by imbalances of power. One strength of the book lies in the many intersecting threads it brings together for reflection. That is perhaps its weakness as well. At times, the book is stretched too thin, as in the sections on Vietnamese history and culture. But the questions that Burr raises are important to ask, and the children's voices and stories she relays are important to listen to.
