Opposition to the day-to-day impacts of coal mining, dispossessionand environmental deterioration, but not the prospect of working forTendele, was evident during the interviews with some communitymembers in Somkhele, yet it was not as obvious when compared to theMakause residents in Mpumalanga. What is it, then, that has builtstrong anti-coal sentiments in Somkhele? And what explains thestrong material dependence on coal that Jacklyn Cock observed in theMpumalanga province?1 An answer to both questions rests on theeconomic histories of both provinces. While Somkhele and Makause liein regions that are notable contributors to the country'sagricultural sector, Mpumalanga's heavy dependence on coal is rootedin its role as South Africa's primary coal-producing area, supplyingboth national and international markets. The province's economy andemployment are significantly tied to the coal industry, with a largeworkforce directly employed by the mines and power stations. In thisregard, over the years, the coal industry overtook agriculturalproduction, making mining a major source of employment, unlike inKwaZulu-Natal, where both commercial and subsistence farmingremained dominant at least in some parts of the province. Without adoubt, access to land by communities in Somkhele – and those thatlive on customary land, broadly speaking – not only lessens theimpact of poverty and unemployment; the land, arguably, alsocushions communities when they resist exploitative forms of wagework provided by extractive industries. I also observed that accessto land enables communities to understand, without external input,the impacts of climate change on everyday life and enables them toimagine life without coal. However, I sensed that young peopledeveloped anticoal sentiments only when they realised that jobopportunities in the colliery mine are thin. That said, there was ashared view among residents that they can live off the land as theyhave in the past and that this is more sustainable than working forthe mine.

Introduction

Ghana presents an interesting case study to explore the variability that exists in a given society in relation to the intersections, or interactions, between dominant children's rights norms and the lived realities of children and their families. In order to understand the plurality that this variability produces it is first important to take a long historical view to child welfare and the emergence of children's rights as a framework to guide policy interventions and public debates. Such an exercise helps to situate narratives about the plurality of childhoods within a broader historical, political, economic and cultural context. Thus, the next two chapters seek to provide the contextual background needed to explain the road upon which the country now known as Ghana travelled to reach the point whereby dominant children's rights language and thinking entered the lexicon used nationally to discuss children's welfare, wellbeing and interests in this context.

This chapter, in particular, aims to track, from a historical perspective, strategies and approaches adopted to ensure the welfare and development of children's rights from the pre- colonial to the post- colonial period, with the view to trying to identify the point at which the concept of children's rights started being deployed to discuss issues of child welfare. While the structure of the chapter is set out chronologically, it is important to understand that I do not view the adoption of the approaches discussed in this chapter as a linear process, especially in relation to those discussed in the section I refer to as the ‘pre- colonial’ era as these were not only prevalent during that period, but continue to serve as key strategies to secure child welfare for many families and communities, even today. Further, policies and approaches discussed during the colonial period continued to have an impact in the post- colonial period through the continued use of laws and policies established in the colonial period in the decades that followed the country's achievement of independence from Britain, including in the present day.

Introduction

The association between dominant children's rights discourses and developments which took place in Western Europe and North America from the 18th century onwards has been at the forefront of debates about children's rights certainly in the past 100 years. This linkage has provided the foundation for much discussion about the children's rights movement and its attendant global policies and laws such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In particular, the Western European and North American origins of dominant children's rights discourses have resulted in the proliferation of publications that have sought to show that the conceptualizations of childhoods, child development, child protection and children's entitlements that are currently being diffused through a range of international policies and legal frameworks as well as programmatic interventions to countries around the world are based on the upheavals of Western European and North American societies from the 17th century onwards. As a result, it is claimed, they are at odds with the understanding of childhood and child development in contexts which have, historically, had different ideas about the nature of childhood, the roles of children and the very essence of what it means to be human (see Burman, 1994, 1996, 1999; Boyden, 1997; Aitken, 2001; Pupavac, 2001; Burr, 2002; de Waal, 2002; Ansell, 2010; Cregan and Cuthbert, 2014; Wells, 2015).

That these policies and discourses have had an impact is evident by the fact that they are now increasingly used to frame discourses around child wellbeing, welfare and interests in a range of countries whose historical trajectories are not necessarily similar to those of Western Europe and North America (Burman, 1996, 1999; Boyden, 1997; Aitken, 2001; Harris- Short, 2001; Pupavac, 2001; Burr, 2002; de Waal, 2002; Balagopalan, 2014; Liebel, 2020). This has been pointed out by other scholars; Burr, in reference to Boyden (1990), makes the following point: ‘What Boyden (1990) has called the global model of childhood, dominated by modern western understanding of children, has set in motion an international agenda that makes it problematic for children to work or to show a level of independence that is now deemed inappropriate in the West’ (Burr, 2002: 53; see also Burman, 1999).

Introduction

Embedded in understandings and indeed, accounts, of childhoods in Ghana and in other contexts in Africa has been the notion of children's duties or responsibilities, which primarily manifest themselves not only in the behaviour expected of children within the context of the family, but also through the work tasks they undertake. Some of this work in which children engage generates income for themselves or their family alongside – or independent of – other household members. This particular aspect of the work children undertake has generated much academic and policy attention over recent decades due to its perceived hazards as well as its implications for children's development, wellbeing and formal educational trajectories. Abebe sets out the crux of dominant policy concerns about child work well when he states:

While it is this paid work in which children engage that has received the bulk of policy and academic attention, children also undertake other forms of work that ensure the maintenance of the household – cooking, cleaning, washing clothes and utensils, yard work, taking care of siblings, running errands, and working on the farm to grow produce to feed the family.

Introduction

While many of the developments around conceptualizations of childhood and constructions of children's rights were taking place around a similar time across societies in Western Europe and the Americas, they remained distinctly national discourses and movements in these regions. It was not until the end of the First World War that these disparate and distinct discourses and efforts about children's rights started to take a more international form, or, at least, a European regional form. This internationalization of this discourse has largely been attributed to Eglantyne Jebb, who is credited with being the founder of the Save the Children movement1 and who after the First World War became concerned about the welfare of children in the countries that had lost the war, notably Austria and Germany, due to her belief that ‘they could hardly be blamed for the war and therefore should not suffer as a consequence of defeat’ (Cunningham, 2013: 371). In her attempt to achieve her objectives, Jebb is said to have established Save the Children in London in 1919 in order to send food to children affected by the blockade against Germany and Austria following the war.

Once the immediate crisis facing children (and indeed, adults in their families) in these countries had abated, Jebb started to realize that there existed a range of other difficult situations, again, mainly in Europe, from which children needed to be saved. This regional focus needs to be situated against a backdrop of the rise in internationalism in public discourses at the time which has been well outlined by Baughan:

Countering the portrayal of the South as the problem location for children's rights

The preceding chapters, which were centred around Ghana as a case study, have foregrounded two subject areas. The first relates to the evolution of children's rights discourses and their attendant laws and policies in Ghana. The second focuses on an exploration of the pluralities of childhood conceptualization and children's lived experiences in Ghana, especially in relation to transitions from childhood to adulthood, understandings of family life and implications for child- rearing practices, and, finally, the notion of children having responsibilities within the household, manifested through the work they undertake both within and outside the home. In discussing these issues, the chapters also considered their implications for children's experiences of the principles underpinning dominant and global discourses relating to children's rights. The question this leads me to now pose is: what insights does this Ghana example offer to the broader study of children's rights, not only in contexts in the South, but also more generally?

Over the years the implications of this plurality of childhood understandings and experiences in a given context in Ghana – even in quite sparsely populated communities – has led me to ask questions about the bulk of the literature that focuses on the intersections between Southern childhoods and dominant children's rights discourses as these have overwhelmingly sought to illuminate the tensions, resistance and inapplicability of dominant discourses of rights and their principles within these contexts. A notable example of such a focus in the literature is evident in Hanson and Nieuwenhuys’ (2012) edited collection centred around the framework of ‘living rights’ with a focus on reconceptualizing children's rights with particular regards to international development. In justifying their focus, the editors explain that most of the case studies illuminated in their edited volume are drawn from contexts in the South: ‘Because, as we explain below, it is there that the contrast between legal principles and daily practices makes it dramatically clear that an alternative conceptualization of children's rights, that goes beyond issues of implementation, is necessary’ (Hanson and Nieuwenhuys, 2013: 3–4).

Introduction

Today, the notion of children's rights is perceived as global and universal by sections of the population in many societies in both the Global North and the Global South. It is now recognized as a concept that is supposed to have meaning in the lives of those regarded as children, now widely defined in the legal framework of diverse countries as all those under the age of 18. This increased visibility of children's rights is now evident in diverse parts of the world regardless of the socioeconomic and cultural context in which childhoods are experienced – to such an extent that a violation of children's rights in many countries is quick to be spotted and flagged up for intervention by many adults and children alike. Despite the prevalence of this notion, at least within policy, practitioner and, increasingly, media and public discourses, the notion of children's rights that are foregrounded in dominant discourses in a range of countries can be traced back to the specific circumstances that underpinned the evolution of Western European societies from what was perceived as their ‘primitive’ past to their so- called rationale, ‘civilized’ modern present. Specifically, these transformations were characterized by social and economic upheavals which accompanied the modernization and industrialization of Western European and North American societies (see Twum- Danso Imoh, 2020). Although the concepts of human and children's rights have evolved over time, there remains a linkage between this historical legacy and contemporary understandings of children's rights that are reflected in dominant human and children's rights discourses and policy making within global institutions.

Therefore, in a discussion about dominant children's rights principles, even in contexts which are historically, culturally and socially distinct from those from which they emerged – Western Europe and North America – it is still important to start by casting our attention back to the historical developments that took place in these regions and explore their implications for shaping the way:

• • understandings of childhoods changed;

• • the impact these transformations had on constructions and reconstructions of children's capabilities, their needs and, indeed, their rights; and

• • how these have shaped societies in the South, especially from the early 20th century onwards.

Why this book?

Since embarking on research on constructions of childhood, child-rearing practices and children's rights in the early 2000s, the bulk of my work has been undertaken in Ghana, the country of my birth and where I spent the early years of my life. While there were various factors that underpinned my decision to focus my research on children's rights on Ghana, not least because it was the first country in the world to ratify the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child in February 1990 – a fact that intrigued me given everything I knew about the country in that period – I must admit that I was also driven by personal motivations. Leaving Ghana with my family at the age of six, which signified the last time I would live there as a resident, can be identified as one of several reasons behind this country becoming so pivotal to my work over the past 26 years. Researching Ghana, which is an endeavour I embarked upon while still an undergraduate at university in the UK in the late 1990s – though not relating to childhood research – was part of a desire to better understand the country of my birth and the place where I spent many of my long vacations during my later childhood and adolescent years. Beyond understanding, researching this country enabled me to contextualize and make meaning of some of my personal observations, experiences and relationships as a Ghanaian.

In particular, given my interest in urbanization and processes of social change more broadly, especially as it relates to childhoods and family life, the bulk of my research in Ghana has centred on Accra, which is located in the southern part of the country (see Figure 1), and assumed its current administrative role in 1877 when the capital was transferred from Cape Coast. Accra (see Figure 2) is now the ‘primate city’ of the country (Brydon and Legge, 1996: 26). It is the seat of national government ministries, the locus of most secondary industry, the site of the country's major services such the Korle Bu teaching hospital, the country's main international airport, Kotoka International Airport, the oldest university in the country – the University of Ghana Legon – and the location of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation and all major press agencies.

Introduction

While the language of children's rights officially emerged in the Ghanaian legal and policy lexicon in the 1969 Constitution, it is the period following 1979 that has come to be associated with the systematic deployment and expansion of not only the language of rights, but a culture of rights, at least within legal and policy discourses, in the country. Therefore, this chapter explores the systematic emergence of dominant children's rights discourses in not only legal and policy discourses in Ghana, but also in broader public discourses. Given that the initial development of this framework coincided with a military take- over of the country that ushered in essentially 13 years of authoritarianism, with its attendant strategies of brutality and intimidation, this chapter additionally devotes attention to the factors that resulted in the development of a so- called culture of children's rights, at least in relation to the policy and legal frameworks of the country, at a time of political repression and suppression.

The emergence of the systematic use of the language of children's rights in policy and legal discourses in Ghana

Although the wording of children's rights was first used in the 1969 Constitution, the language was more fully developed in the legal and policy lexicon of Ghana from 1979, the same year that the International Year of the Child was marked globally. The first step in this construction of children's rights was the 1979 Constitution, which came into force on 24 September 1979, and attempted to ostensibly change the ideological underpinnings of state laws towards a more child- rights focused approach. As part of this commitment the Constitution made numerous provisions relating to human rights. With regards to children's rights, provisions are made within Article 32(3) instructing parliament to enact such laws as are necessary to ensure and safeguard the rights of children to care, assistance, maintenance and protection (Government of Ghana, 1979).

Introduction

Having established the historical context of Ghana, especially in relation to the development of dominant children's rights discourses not only in legal and policy discourses, but also within public consciousness, I now want to return my attention to the ideas I had started to develop at the end of Chapter 3 and explore the impact of the country's historical legacy on the plurality of childhood experiences that are identifiable and their implications for children's rights.

Before turning my attention to Ghana, it is important to situate this discussion within a broader African context in order to illuminate the point that Ghana is not unique in relation to this idea of plurality and variability in childhoods and family life more generally. In fact, it is now widely accepted that sub- Saharan Africa is a continent of multiple heritages. Within the region three traditions have been observed as intersecting with each other and together, shaping the beliefs and lifestyles of individuals and communities. These traditions pertain specifically to the respective worldviews of:

• 1. the diverse Indigenous groups that can be located on the continent;

• 2. Islamic religion and culture; and

• 3. Western, primarily Europeanized Christian, traditions.

This state of affairs is a product of a series of developments which are critical to the history of many countries on the continent, most notably: Indigenous cultural norms and values which have been transmitted from generation to generation for thousands of years; Arab incursions on the continent from the early 7th century onwards, which led to mass conversions to Islam in societies across the continent, especially in the North, Sahel, West, East and Horn; evangelization by European missionaries from the 15th century onwards which sought to civilize and convert to a Europeanized form of Christianity, especially through the institution of the school, Indigenous peoples they considered to be primitives living ‘ungodly’ lifestyles; formal colonization of much of the continent, which was accompanied by the introduction of a cash economy and, in turn, led to a huge desire by Indigenous groups for white- collar jobs and as a result, Western academic education; and the more recent intensification of global processes which has led to the circulation of goods, capital, ideas, media and people.