CR4WSF

Over the last decade, countries across the world have embarked on a course of changing their existing economic models in favour of one driven by the free-market, incorporating processes of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. Has this change benefited the world's people? There is increasing documented evidence that globalisation and its attendant handmaidens --- liberalisation and privatisation --- have not produced the progress and prosperity they promised. Only a few have benefited within a nation, and only a few nations within the world; thus accentuating disparities between people and between nations for the rest of us, the dream of another world struggles against the harsh reality of the present. Among those who have been left outside the radius of profit and growth stand millions of the poor. This is well known. What is less noticed and perhaps even less acknowledged is the fact that a substantial percentage of this population --- nearly half --- consists of children. The direct impact of globalisation on children and their rights may not immediately leap to the eye. And yet, the experience of organisations working on children's rights is that the children of the poor, especially of those most vulnerable to the loss of livelihood and related security, pay the highest price. Among them, the situation of the socio-economically marginalised children has in fact worsened over the last few years. Children cannot escape the ill effects of negative trends/developments in their communities and countries. Debt, conflict, degradation of the environment, sell-outs of natural resources, threats to food security, job losses and jobless growth, migration --- children's own well being and prospects are placed at risk by all of these. The countries of the poor are worst-affected --- and their large child populations pay the highest price. Every terrain in today's world map is thus a danger zone for children. This is borne out by worsening levels of basic health, nutrition and shelter as they fall to knife of social sector cutbacks and policies, programmes and development initiatives that continue to deprive communities and families of resources on which they have traditionally depended, through loss of control and access to land, forest resources and water. Privatisation of social sector benefits such as education, health and provision of water are clearly taking their toll on millions of children. The symptoms of negative fallout are visible: children deprived of even sparse social benefits as forced and economic migration displaces them, the increasing number of children on the streets, the growing number of street girls, more and more children being trafficked within and across borders and rising numbers of children in part or full-time work. It is in this context that discussions and action to ensure children's rights to equitable resources - natural and financial become critical. Who will speak for children? Like all the dispossessed, they are turning to the World Social Forum. The initiative of the Group on Children's Rights in a Globalising World is to help raise their voice in the WSF process. The move to build a platform on Child Rights for WSF is justified by the inescapable fact that it is children's present and future that stand at highest risk of irreparable damage in the disturbed terrains of the world. Who will secure children's rights? This has to be a key concern of the WSF discourse. Children are not a small sub-group of society. They are nearly half the world's people. In many poorer nations, they constitute more than 50% of the populations. What happens to them happens to their entire societies. In adopting Millenium Development Goals, and not investing in implementing them, the governments of the developing world are already demonstrating the dilemma of accepting both human development commitments and economic reform policies. The one is life-giving, the other is life-sapping. Whose lives are being threatened? Primarily, those of the children of poor communities. Then what is the future? Can another world be built without addressing this question? Children deserve a right to equitable resources. Over and above assuring this entitlement to a fair share, the world cannot afford not to invest in children without crippling the potential of the poor to survive, and to overcome their poverty. At WSF 2004, the CR4WSF panel event focused on the impacts of Globalisation. Presentations by adults and children highlighted the human rights of children in an increasingly indifferent world policy setting --- to education, to housing, to dignity --- and showcased the rights of the disabled. The topic of the panel on 'Children's Rights to Equitable Resources' in 2005 takes that discussion further and will focus on the following issues: The right of the poor to survive and to realise their rights. Loss of natural resources and impact on children. Children and homelessness, forced evictions, economic migration, street children, refugees. Children and budgets: the declining share of the youngest. Growing marginalisation of the vulnerable groups (socio-economically marginalised-tribal and indigenous communities, minorities, disabled) Children themselves have carried their demand into the World Social Forum. They came in their thousands to the 2004 Forum in Mumbai. Now they are here in Porto Alegre. Their question is very simple: How can you ignore the logic of giving children first place?