Abstract
This article offers the first quantitative analysis of European Union external strategies for children’s rights. Drawing on original data, it finds that European Union diplomatic pressure and economic aid have increased over time but that the European Union still lacks independent policy positions on children’s rights. European Union strategies target states to different degrees and international non-governmental organizations are favoured over domestic organizations. Findings suggest that the European Union is becoming a more significant actor of child rights governance, underscoring the value of a comparative approach.
Keywords
Introduction
In 2012, the European Union (EU) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ‘the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe’ (The Norwegian Nobel Committee, 2012). The award money was used to establish the initiative ‘EU Children of Peace’ supporting children in post-conflict. At the launch, the President of the European Commission (EC), José Manuel Barroso, issued the following statement: […] We were awarded this prize in recognition of the tireless work that several generations have put into writing the European success story, and in passing peace and prosperity to their children. Today, in a world that is increasingly globalized, our children are asking us to share this success with the rest of the planet […]. (European Commission, 2013)
As the world’s largest foreign aid donor and a powerful player in the global economy, with bilateral relations with most states and partnerships with several multilateral bodies, the EU has great potential to impact children’s rights worldwide. According to Barroso, the EU has a particular role to play in global child rights governance. The aim of this article is to examine what this role is. What is the content of EU external strategies for child rights? Who are the targets of its diplomacy and economic aid for children? Through a unique mapping of EU diplomatic pressure and economic aid, I identify the prioritized child policy aims, countries and actors in EU external strategies for child rights.
This article contributes to the Special Issue, and the emerging literature on child rights governance (see, for example, Grugel and Piper, 2007; Reynolds et al., 2006), in two prominent respects. First, the EU as a global actor of child rights governance is a new case within this research field. A few law scholars and political scientists have studied different aspects of EU external policy making for children’s rights. Vandenhole (2011) finds that EU external policy documents emphasize children’s ‘needs’ rather than ‘rights’ and child protection, particularly children affected by armed conflict and violence against children (Vandenhole, 2011). Others have looked at the process through which children’s rights have been integrated into the agenda-setting and policy formulation stages of the EU policy making process (Grugel and Iusmen, 2013; Von Bahr, 2017). A handful of case studies assess the EU’s external influence on child rights. While the EU has influenced child rights practices in candidate countries (Iusmen, 2013, 2014; Stalford, 2012), Grugel (2016) finds the EU’s responses to child labour to be ‘patchy and limited’ (p. 193). Thus far no one has provided a comprehensive assessment of the EU as an actor of child rights governance through its external policy. Second, the article makes a methodological and conceptual contribution to the largely qualitative child rights literature through its quantitative approach. I study EU external child rights strategies using three original data sets on EU diplomatic activities and economic aid. Analysis of many cases allows for a comprehensive yet fine-grained comparison of EU external strategies across time and geographic regions. The mapping of similarities and differences in how the EU addresses children’s rights in different countries and regions enables me to draw conclusions about the priorities and patterns of the EU as a global actor of child rights governance.
The argument of this article can be summarized in four points. First, EU diplomatic pressure and thematic aid for child rights have increased over time. Second, I find that the EU child rights strategies are dominated by child development and child protection policy aims, mimicking the UN policy agendas. Third, the EU is more inclined to exert diplomatic pressure towards low-income countries than high-income countries. A large portion of the child protection aid is granted to countries neighbouring the EU and child empowerment aid primarily targets countries affected by conflict. Fourth, as a major sponsor of large international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the EU contributes to the continued authority of this group of actors in global child rights governance.
The remainder of this article is structured as follows. First, I provide a background to EU external policy for children’s rights. Then, I present the conceptual framework. Thereafter, I proceed with a description of the research design and present the data sets. Next, I present descriptive statistics on EU diplomatic pressure and economic aid strategies to promote children’s rights. Finally, I conclude by discussing the implications of the article for the study of child rights governance.
Background to EU external policy for children’s rights
Twenty years ago, children’s rights were rarely featured in EU external policy (Stalford, 2012). In the late 1990s, Eastern enlargement became the first policy area to thoroughly integrate children’s rights. In the mid-2000s, the EU institutions strengthened the political agenda and legal basis for children’s rights in foreign policy. A 2006 initiative by the European Commission (2006) to develop a comprehensive EU strategy on the rights of the child later became An EU Agenda for the rights of the child (European Commission, 2011). The agenda combines internal and external policy dimensions. The Lisbon Treaty (2007) strengthened the legal status of the rights of the child in EU external policy. Children’s rights are covered in Article 3 1 of the Lisbon Treaty and in Article 24 2 (inter alia) in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which become binding on the Union and member states when implementing EU legislation, through the Lisbon Treaty in 2009.
With regard to diplomacy, EU has adopted a number of non-binding human rights guidelines that serve as implementation tools for EU representations upon which to base specific actions. The first EU human rights guidelines to address children’s rights were the 2003 EU Guidelines on Children and Armed Conflict, which were followed by a checklist for Security and Defence Policy operations. In 2007, the EU Guidelines for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Child 3 were launched, with violence against children as the initial focus area for implementation. The Lisbon Treaty decentralized the responsibility for bilateral political dialogues to the EU delegations, that is, the EU’s embassies. EU delegations became responsible for writing Country Human Rights Strategies with set priority human rights issues. While children affected by armed conflict is considered a mandatory concern in affected third states, delegations can choose whether or not to focus on other child rights issues.
EU development aid is a complex system of regional and thematic instruments governed by different regulations. The European Development Fund (EDF) is the main instrument for economic aid to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and overseas countries and territories. The fund is financed directly by the EU member states. The latest EDF regulation from 2014 refers to children only once, regarding programming on conflict prevention, state and peace building and post-conflict reconstruction (Council of the European Union, 2014: 41). The Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI) is the largest external financing instrument in the multiannual financial framework of the EU Budget, amounting to €19.7 billion for the period 2014–2020 (European Parliament and Council of the European Union, 2014a). The DCI covers all developing countries except candidate and aspiring candidate countries. 4 The geographic programmes under the DCI account for the lion’s share of the funding. Child rights constitute a common area of cooperation under these programmes and there is a threshold of at least 20% of the instrument to be allocated to basic social services, especially health and education. The European Neighbourhood Instrument allocates €15.4 billion, during 2014–2020, to the sixteen partner countries under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) (European Parliament and Council of the European Union, 2014b). 5 This instrument covers support to democracy, rule of law, civil society development, economic growth and fighting child labour. Finally, the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) is a thematic development financing programme primarily funding civil society organizations targeting human rights (European Parliament and Council of the European Union, 2014c). The first period of the EIDHR, 1999–2006, was governed by the Council Human Rights regulations in which children are only mentioned in the preambles, and not under the specified objectives. In the 2006, EIDHR regulation, children’s rights are part of the scope of human rights promotion. The regulation also covers female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriages.
Conceptual framework
In order to analyse the content and targets of EU strategies for child rights, I combine insights from critical child rights studies and International Relations (IR) scholarship on norm diffusion. I view children’s rights as legal norms as well as socially constructed conceptions. Grugel and Piper (2007) notes that while the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) established a global model of childhood based on rights, there are nevertheless ‘huge difficulties […] to make an abstract concept like rights for children relevant for policies on the ground’ (p. 114). The norms enshrined in the CRC are vaguely formulated and open to interpretation and negotiation of meaning. The outcome of norm negotiations is a complex function of power relations, norm characteristics, actors’ interests and abilities. In order to understand the EU as an actor of child rights governance, it is hence critical to understand both the content of and the actors involved in its external strategies. In this section, I will first describe the two types of EU external strategies that will be analysed in this article and thereafter conceptualize categories of child policy aims, and the targets of EU strategies.
External strategies to promote child rights
This article focuses on two external strategies that the EU has at its disposal to promote children’s rights in its bilateral relations with countries outside the union. 6 The first type of strategy is to put diplomatic pressure on states to adhere to child rights norms. In the IR literature, this represents a type of normative pressure tactic which is understood as ‘an exercise in social power, promoted and contested between specific [actors] in relational terms’ (Terman and Voeten, 2017: 6). Diplomatic pressure involves different forms of communicative strategies such as managing bilateral political and human rights dialogues and issuing official and unofficial statements and condemnations targeting third states. The typical approach of the EU is one of dialogue and persuasion rather than sanctions (Magen and McFaul, 2009).
The second strategy that the EU may use to affect children’s rights in other states is the provision of material resources through economic aid. By following the money, I can identify the priority order of different child issues in EU external policy. I also capture if financial aid is granted to states directly through budget and sector support, or non-state actors operating at the local level, which will be elaborated below.
Conceptualizing international child policy
In her study on the CRC negotiations, Holzscheiter (2010) theorizes the contested conceptions of childhood that are reflected in the Convention, providing a framework that interweaves different notions of childhood with rights claims and political objectives. Holzscheiter’s (2010) ‘discursive ecology’ contains four different discursive reflections of childhood in international Politics: Paternalism, Development, Peace and Civilization, and Emancipation (pp. 99–137). Drawing on this framework, I have developed a conceptual scheme of international child policy for the analysis of EU strategies. It encompasses three categories of child policy aims, each reflecting particular visions for children and child rights norms as defined by Holzscheiter. The norms and ideas that Holzscheiter portrays as ‘Development’ and ‘Emancipation’ are mirrored in the categories Development and Empowerment, while ‘Paternalism’ and ‘Peace and Civilization’ have been combined into one category: Protection. As the content analysis of this article focuses on policy (rather than discourse), I have also defined policy reforms for each category.
The aim of Child Development policy is child development as part of the development of a country or society as a whole (Holzscheiter, 2010: 99–137). The child’s right to education and health (rights conventionally referred to as ‘development rights’) belongs to this category. The integration of education, health, water and sanitation into comprehensive development strategies is regarded as important means to achieve societal and economic development. This is the typical rationale behind most global development policies, such as the Millennium Development Goals. Moreover, several of the conventional measures of poverty and human development cover child development indicators. 7
The basis for Child Protection policy aims is the vulnerability of the child. Protecting children against violence and abuse is an element of achieving the higher goals of peace and civilization, or ‘the best interests of the child’ as safeguarded by parents or the state (Holzscheiter, 2010: 99–137). Rights include protection from abuse, neglect, exploitation and cruelty, including in times of war and in the criminal justice system. With regard to violence against children by family members, child protection policy requires state expansion into the family sphere. Child protection policy has gained salience in contemporary international politics, as evidenced by the strong emphasis on violence against children in the Sustainable Development Goals.
Child Empowerment policy emphasizes the child’s evolving autonomy. The individuality of rights and the right to participation are both central aspects of child empowerment. Specific rights include freedoms such as the child’s right to expression, association and information; the right to an identity and nationality; the right of children to know their rights; and to be heard in all matters affecting them. Finally, the principle of non-discrimination is fundamental for the idea of individual rights (Holzscheiter, 2010: 99–137). Child empowerment policy inherently involves minority protection, rule of law, civil society and media freedoms, that is, the criteria of a liberal society.
Targets of external strategies
This article examines two types of targets of EU strategies. First, I am interested in which countries are (not) targeted with diplomatic pressure and economic aid as these patterns may reveal how child rights strategies relate to other EU interests. Mapping of the recipients of EU strategies enables analyses of linkages between child rights strategies and other external and internal interests. Second, with regard to economic aid, I also analyse which actors the EU supports at the country level. This analysis will reveal to what degree the EU promotes state and non-state actors in child rights governance. While state actors 8 are the principal duty bearers in the institutionalization and implementation of children’s rights, civil society can play a vital role for child rights promotion by stimulating debate and empowering mobilization for accountability. Civil society actors include a broad range of groups from NGOs and social movements to foundations, encompassing international entities and domestic organizations. Finally, international governmental organizations such as United Nations Emergency Fund for Children (UNICEF) and International Labour Organization (ILO) have varying mandates to provide global child policy assistance to states and advocate for children’s rights.
The type of material used in this article, statistical data on EU external strategies, does not allow for in-depth analysis of different conceptions of child policy aims, or how strategies are implemented at local level. Instead, the categories of child policy aims and the targets of EU strategies will help identify the main orientations and priorities of EU strategies, drawing on descriptions in EU reports and data bases. In the next section, I present the detailed conceptual scheme with examples of how the categories and targets are operationalized.
Research design
The article’s aim to map EU external diplomatic pressure and economic aid for children’s rights is achieved through descriptive analysis of comparable information on how the EU deploys its diplomatic and economic aid strategies. Drawing on the conceptual framework described above, I have gathered and coded three novel data sets, detailed below. Data on diplomatic pressure draw on content analysis of the child policy aims that EU bilateral efforts seek to achieve. Data on economic aid combine financial amounts with content analysis of the child policy aims of the programmes.
Data and operationalizations
Two of the data sets gauge EU strategies concerning children over time. These are constructed with a state-year unit of analysis and consist of 162 countries outside the EU. Data are limited to independent states.
The first data set collects information on diplomatic pressure from the EU Annual Reports on Human Rights and Democracy in the World. These reports present the official human rights priorities in the EU’s bilateral diplomatic relations and provide information on EU activities and the countries’ human rights situation. The language of the reports is mostly neutral and non-confrontational, and the statements are short. I identify if states are targeted concerning children, yes (1) or no (0) for each year during 2001–2016. I have also coded type of child issue, such as ‘juvenile justice’, ‘girls’ rights’ and ‘child rights’. I do not differentiate between descriptive statements (‘x has been addressed’) and normative accounts (‘x remains a matter of concern’). 9 Between 2001 and 2006, the reports cover selected third states, primarily countries affected by conflicts and large economic partners such as China and the United States. The following reports provide information on all states in the EU neighbourhood and selected states in Africa, Asia and Latin America. From 2010, reports include information on all countries with whom the EU has bilateral relations. Finally, while the reports present the EU’s official bilateral priorities concerning human rights, these may not provide the full picture of diplomatic pressure. To mitigate the risk that a ‘0’ in the data set would not correspond to inaction, I have triangulated the data with other reports and information from EU staff.
The second data set gathers information on the EU thematic DCI the EIDHR projects from 2000 to 2014. Each allocation represents a project, which is categorized by one theme. If several themes are covered, the title and project description determines the selection of the theme. Because of its central position within the category Protection, the violence theme therefore takes precedence over other themes. For a coding example, see Table 1.
Operationalization of categories of child policy aims.
CAAC: children affected by armed conflict; HR: human resources; EU: European Union; EIDHR: European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights.
The third set of data covers EU economic aid allocations for the period 2013 to 2016. It is based on the screening of six thousand unique allocations in a Commission data base. Unlike the first two data sets, it excludes accession countries. The latest EU development finance regulations run from 2014 to 2020 and the data capture what has been contracted in the early years of this period. These data are hence limited to provide a snap shot analysis and not a summation of any regulation. The rich information nevertheless enables a comprehensive picture of the EU’s child rights priorities during an interesting period of increased focus on human rights, and children’s rights, in external action. The units of analysis in this data set are allocations (in €) with contract year 2013–2016. The selection criteria for project allocations are the themes listed in Table 1. Projects include activities directed at children, societies, organizations and state administrations. 10 Allocations are coded by category of child policy aims, theme, financial instrument, amount, targeted actor and country of implementation. Each allocation is unique and represents a development project or a part of a project, as one project can be coded according to different themes. A review of the deleted projects due to missing data shows that these are proportional to the overall distribution of locations, themes and recipients.
Table 1 displays the operationalization of the three categories of child policy aims: Development, Protection and Empowerment. It is worth to note that I code ‘Access to Justice’ as Protection rather than as Empowerment since these allocations are part of broader child protection projects.
Regarding the targeted actors of economic aid, I have coded four groups: state actors, international NGOs 11 pursuing international advocacy and headquartered in the global North, domestic NGOs (organizations with national operations, regional coalitions of domestic NGOs and regional organizations) and international governmental organizations.
Results and analysis
In this section, I present descriptive statistics on EU diplomatic pressure and economic aid, beginning with an examination of the child issues addressed in EU diplomatic pressure during 2000–2015.
Issues addressed in diplomatic pressure
Children and children’s rights have increasingly been addressed in the EU’s diplomatic pressure on states, as presented in Table 2. The number of states targeted concerning child issues has increased from around 10 in the early 2000s to 106 in 2015. Children affected by armed conflict has been a relatively constant theme since 2005 when the EU introduced this issue in priority states following the lists of the United Nations Security Council. Around 2008, there was a linguistic change in the reports from ‘children affected by conflict’ to ‘children’s rights’. In 2009, the focus on violence against children increased in accordance with the new child rights guidelines, and in 2011, the EU launched a global campaign for the ratification of child rights conventions and optional protocols. Child labour trended the same year, following a Commission Communication in 2010. In 2014, the EU addressed issues pertaining to children in more than half of its diplomatic relations. EU diplomats increasingly bring up girls’ rights, child trafficking and juvenile justice in bilateral relations. The themes that have become the most prevalent in EU diplomacy hence concern child protection policy aims involving highly contested norms about what constitutes violence or harmful work, and appropriate ages for marriage and criminal responsibility. This trend follows the development of child protection policy at the UN level, such as the appointment of the Special Representative on violence against children in 2009 and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Diplomatic pressure concerning child themes 2001–2015.
Source: EU Annual Reports on Human Rights and Democracy in the World.
Juvenile justice: ‘juvenile justice’ or death penalty of minors; Violence: ‘violence’ and ‘abuse’ targeting children, including domestic violence (excluding children affected by armed conflict); CAAC: children affected by armed conflict; Trafficking: trafficking of children; Child labour: ‘child labour’, ‘forced begging’ and ‘child slavery; Girls’ rights: ‘Girls’ rights’, discrimination of girls, violence and abuse targeting girls, ‘honour killings’, ‘FGM’ and ‘child marriage’; Child rights: child* rights and/or the ratification and/or realization of the CRC and its optional protocols. Other: themes related to children that are not covered by the other seven themes and that are not raised more than three times in any report.
Issues funded through economic aid
In this section, I look at the distribution of child issues in EU economic aid, using the three categories of child policy aims. Figure 1 presents economic aid for five geographic regions during 2013–2016. It shows that child development received the most funds, more than twice as much as child protection while child empowerment received only one percent of total funding. As seen, child development receives the most EU assistance in all five regions. Development themes health, education, water and sanitation (WASH) represent key sectors in international development cooperation under frameworks such as the Millennium Development Goals. Child development projects and is usually financed through long-term and large-scale programmes involving state agencies.
EU child economic aid 2013–2016, total allocations by category and region.
Moving on to look at the EIDHR, the amount of funding to child themes has increased over time, both in absolute and relative terms. The number of states with projects concerning child rights went from 63 in EIDHR I (2000–2006) to 87 in EIDHR II (2007–2014). The share of total funding to child rights themes was raised from around five percent in EIDHR I to around seven percent of EIDHR II. Figure 2 presents the distribution of themes within the child related allocations of the programme. Similar to developments in EU diplomacy, there is an increased focus on violence against children. It looks like aid to exploitation (child labour and trafficking) has decreased significantly, but this theme has rather been integrated into broader project framed as violence. Allocations to children affected by armed conflict, development (education mostly) and juvenile justice have increased, while general child rights project assistance has decreased. Funds are hence more evenly distributed over different themes in the second period compared with the first.
EIDHR allocations over two periods, by child rights theme.
In sum, EU diplomatic pressure and economic aid with regard to children have increased over time. More effort is spent trying to convince countries to address an increased variety of different child rights issues, and more money is spent on child rights through aid. EU child rights strategies largely reflect the UN agendas. While child development is the dominant child policy aim in economic aid, and child protection is the primary concern in diplomacy, both strategies only marginally support policy to empower children.
Target countries of diplomatic pressure
Who are the targets of EU diplomatic pressure for child rights? In the early 2000s, EU pressure on states not affected by conflict was very sporadic, and mainly targeted China (on juvenile justice), North Korea, Turkey and the United States (critiquing the death penalty of minors and the United States voting against UN child rights resolutions). Over time, an increasing number of states have been targets of diplomatic pressure. Figure 3 displays the targeted countries for different geographical regions, over the period from 2007 (when the EU annual human rights reports began to cover states more systematically) up to 2016. It shows that the increase in diplomatic pressure has mainly occurred vis-à-vis South and Central American, Caribbean and Pacific states, followed by states in Sub-Saharan Africa. Only around a third of the states in the EU’s closest neighbourhood were targeted concerning child issues.
EU diplomatic pressure for child rights, by region.
Figure 4 shows targeted countries by income group (according to the World Bank’s classification). The EU prefers to exert diplomatic pressure on low and lower-middle-income states. For example, it has addressed girls’ rights and child labour in Cape Verde, Senegal, Yemen and Zambia while no diplomatic pressure has been exerted on high-income states such as Bahrain, Brunei, Kuwait or Qatar. This means that the EU primarily puts pressure on countries that likely experience high problem pressures (high rate of children living in poverty, high burden of disease, conflict etc.) and have limited resources and basic administrative capacities to address these problems. EU pressure on higher-middle income and high-income states has however increased over time, including on Malaysia, Namibia and Saudi Arabia.
EU diplomatic pressure for child rights, by income group.
Summing up these figures, we see that the EU is inclined to put diplomatic pressure on geographically distant states, and low-income states. Data analysis also reveal that the targets of diplomatic pressure received significantly more economic aid concerning children than the countries that the EU did not target, suggesting linkages between the two strategies. The next section provides analyses of the targets of EU economic aid.
Target countries of economic aid
The countries receiving the most child assistance during 2013–2016, at more than €100 million, were also among the largest receivers of general EU economic aid. Many are populous countries such as India and Ethiopia, or have large migrant populations such as EU neighbouring states Lebanon and Jordan. Several have had recent violent conflicts and most are low or lower-middle-income countries. States with child related assistance ranging from €20 to €100 million represent a mix of geographic regions and income levels. The countries that received the most aid in the child development category are neighbouring states such as Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, and developing states in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
Regarding child protection, seven of the fifteen largest recipients of this type of aid were in the ENP region. Figure 5 presents average distributions of aid by protection theme. The lion’s share of aid regarding child labour, migration and trafficking were granted states ENP region. Child labour aid in this region includes a large programme in Egypt by the World Food Programme. African states received the most assistance with regard to girls’ rights, violence, protection systems and vulnerable groups. With regard to Latin America, violence related aid was distributed among several states, chiefly in Central America, while Colombia received almost all the support for children affected by armed conflict.
Protection allocations by theme and region (2013–2016).
Does the large share of aid to child migration and trafficking in the ENP region correspond to particularly high problem pressures? To analyse this relationship, Figure 6 relates EU economic aid to children with the number of refugees, internally displaced persons and asylum seekers in a country, defined as ‘persons of concern’ by the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees. As seen, there is no evident association between the number of ‘persons of concern’ and EU assistance. Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco are all part of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, which has come to deal increasingly with migration issues. The fact that these countries receive higher levels of assistance than countries like Colombia, Iraq and Sudan is related to the EU’s strategic interests of cooperation in its neighbourhood, which will be further discussed in the final section of this article.
EU child aid and country refugee situation.
Finally, child empowerment assistance is most common in low-income states. In 24 of the 28 countries that experienced a conflict in 2011, the EU sponsored a project to promote child participation during 2013–2016. This is a high number compared with the group of states without conflict, among which 51 of 91 received a grant involving child participation.
This section has shown that EU economic aid for children gives priority to countries in conflict, post-conflict or with many refugees, especially with regard to neighbouring regions. This pattern applies to all three categories of child policy aims: development, protection and empowerment.
Target actors of economic aid
In the final part of the analysis, I will examine the types of actors that received the EU’s economic aid. With regard to child development, economic aid is primarily a state affair as the lion’s share of these funds are granted state actors (55 percent) and international governmental organizations (30 percent). NGO recipients are the most common in health aid, receiving around eighteen percent of this funding. Regarding child protection, about half of the aid targets NGOs. There are large regional variations in the levels of aid to different actors, as seen in Figure 7.
Protection aid to different actors, by region.
The extraordinary high level of protection aid to international governmental organizations in the EU neighbourhood is explained by the large programmes in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan to support children who are internally displaced or refugees. UNICEF has received support for programmes on child protection and juvenile justice in Egypt and Tunisia as well as in Eastern neighbourhood states. International NGOs received more funding than domestic NGOs in all regions except Latin America. In 2012, the EU formed a Framework Partnership Agreement with REDLAMYC, a regional child rights network. In Sub-Saharan Africa, assistance to domestic NGOs was granted in 76 percent of states. The twelve states that did not receive aid this way include Uganda, Benin, Togo and Equatorial Guinea. This type of aid is not extended to many of the small pacific island states, and not to populous Indonesia and Vietnam.
Finally, while only a minute portion of EU funds support child empowerment, the projects that do deserve a comment. Figure 8 presents how this type of assistance is dispersed across actors. While support to international governmental organizations primarily involve birth registration programmes and support to civil society, child participation projects are run by NGOs. Empowerment is seldom the sole stated objective of these projects but is often combined with activities to promote youth employment or peacebuilding. The largest grants were provided to international NGOs like Christian Aid and Save the Children. Again, Latin America stands out as the only region where more aid is provided to domestic NGOs than to international NGOs. The EU did, however, not directly support any of the region’s child- and youth-led organizations, which are among the worlds’ most organized (Liebel, 2003).
Empowerment aid to different actors, by region
Summing up the numbers on actors targeted with economic aid, the EU predominantly sponsors states, international governmental organizations and large international NGOs like Save the Children, Plan International and ECPAT. Domestic NGOs receive far less support in all regions except Latin America, and aid to child- or youth-led organizations is negligible.
Discussion
This article has analysed the EU as an actor of child rights governance, addressing two specific questions: What is the content of EU external strategies for child rights? Who are the targets of its diplomacy and economic aid for children? I will conclude by discussing the key findings of the analysis.
First, the article finds that despite increased EU external activity concerning child rights, the EU has still not taken an independent policy position on child rights. Its role as an external actor of child rights governance is rather to support UN policy initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals, and predominantly child development and child protection policy aims. While this finding ties in well with previous research on the influence of UNICEF and the ILO on EU external policy making (Grugel, 2016; Grugel and Iusmen, 2013), it is nevertheless surprising. In general, however, the EU has more progressive human rights and democracy policies than the UN, for example with regard to the death penalty, human rights defenders and the rights of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people. One reason why there is no independent EU voice for child rights is the lack of interest among EU member states in promoting the EU as an actor of child rights governance (Von Bahr, 2017).
Second, the article has shown that EU strategies target different types of countries to varying degrees, suggesting that other external and internal interests affect child rights efforts. It is unusual for the EU to criticize other rich countries for how they handle children’s rights. Children’s rights are instead strongly linked to development policy, addressed primarily vis-à-vis low-income states. These findings resonate with previous research on child labour in EU trade strategies (Grugel, 2016) and human rights in EU foreign policy (Youngs, 2004) showing that strategically important states are less likely criticized for human rights abuses. The large share of development funding to migrating children in neighbouring countries is linked with EU internal interests. Many migrating children are in countries bordering the EU because they hope for a future within the union. The rights of these children raise critical questions about the EU’s duties to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights. As an illustration, through the 2016 EU–Turkey agreement to prevent migration flows across the Turkish border to the Union, the EU allocated €6 billion to support Syrian refugees in Turkey. At the same time, the EU refused to provide legal avenues for seeking asylum in the EU, thereby violating the human rights of the same refugees, many of whom are children. Large aid volumes for children in migration hence should be understood and judged in the larger context of EU asylum and migration policy.
Third, the EU is a major sponsor of large international child rights NGOs, especially within the fields of child protection and empowerment. Many of these organizations have been and are still highly influential in shaping global child rights norms as well as in driving their implementation. The system of Northern donors supporting Northern-based NGO activities in the Global South has consequences for the longer term child rights governance on a national level. In cases where states are unwilling or unable to protect children in the way that the EU considers necessary, the EU may cooperate with civil society to enforce reforms or target children directly. The extent to which large resource-strong organizations support or hamper local child rights groups is an empirical question. Critical child rights literature has raised central concerns about the democratic legitimacy of top-down initiatives that spread Western conceptions of childhood and child rights through a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach (see, for example, Veerman and Levine, 2000). One apparent risk with this system is that international NGOs continue managing child rights issues that are sensitive to state governance and politics, thus delaying national deliberations on how to interpret transnationally agreed norms. The issue is further complicated by the fact that children lack influence over how their rights are interpreted, institutionalized and implemented at the global as well as the local level. The EU does not ask children how well Scottish Catholic International Aid or SOS Children’s Village protect or fulfil children’s rights.
In sum, the findings suggest that the EU is becoming a more active and significant actor of child rights governance through its external policy. To evaluate the effects of EU strategies, a next step would be to develop methods for the systematic comparison of implementation of child rights strategies at the domestic level.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council under Grant 2013-6264.
