Global and Local Approaches to Children's Rights in Vietnam

Abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) assumes that children are universally the same. It can be argued that its provisions are weighted in favour of a modern, western sense of the individual. While there is a growing body of literature that supports this proposition, little material exists in which both the lives and attitudes of children and the approaches of international aid agencies working with them are researched and considered alongside each other. This article examines the CRC in relation to its influence on local attitudes towards childhood and children's lived experiences in the context of Vietnam. In doing so it also presents the attitudes of aid agency members that work with, and focus their attentions on, those children. It is suggested that members of the organizations that uphold the CRC too often assume that local people share their notion of what is meant by rights. The article concludes that it is imperative that we continue to challenge poor connections between the global and local, the public and the private as advocated in the work of Sharon Stephens.