Children’s rights in contexts of humanitarian needs: risk factors and educational demands

Abstract

This study problematizes the configuration of child poverty in contemporary contexts, placing childhood in a humanitarian situation, implying multiple educational demands. The analysis, based on the qualitative approach, integrates bibliographical and documental sources to empirical data from four Latin American countries, where subjects were heard in individual interviews. In the discussion, the argument places the configuration of child poverty in the economic and political spheres, in the face of inequality and social exclusion, in children’s daily lives, permeated by the risks and violence characteristic of the newest wars. This context put children in situations of humanitarian needs. Thus, intersectoral educational efforts are demanded to overcome child poverty, which is produced and reproduced in distorted discourses on the basis of cultural arguments to justify political and economic interests.