Contested futures: The ‘humanitarian value’ of childhood in rural Sierra Leone

Abstract

This article explores contrasting social constructions of the ‘value of children’ in a rural village in Northern Sierra Leone. It investigates how the meanings of childhood, its temporal extension and children’s (present and future) roles are differently interpreted in the context of humanitarian intervention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and participatory research with children, it explores how child work and education are conceptualised by a range of different actors (local authorities, families and international NGOs). The analysis sheds light on the tensions which arise between children’s ‘present usefulness’ to family livelihoods through their work at home and their potential future utility through their ‘work’ at school. Taking two case study exemplars, it shows how international NGOs’ humanitarian constructions of African children as innocent victims, ‘emotionally priceless’ and rights bearing can be locally reconfigured and appropriated for economic gain. The article demonstrates marginalised children’s active role in blurring boundaries between emotional, monetary, global and local valuations of what children ‘should’ do and be. It also highlights how the ‘humanitarian value’ of childhood constitutes the bedrock upon which Sierra Leone’s alternative futures are being actively imagined and contested along ‘North–South’ transactions.