Gendered Moral Dimensions of Childhood Vulnerability

Community; state; and international definitions of childhood and vulnerability play a central role in determining which people and families receive the limited resources available to support vulnerable children's survival and thriving. International definitions of childhood and vulnerability are often assumed by international development organizations (IDOs) to embody universal human rights and equality norms; and thus to serve as an appropriate basis for creating universal categorization frameworks to identify vulnerable children across communities and states. Community definitions; on the other hand; may be viewed as particular and potentially biased; embedded as they are in local power dynamics and social relations. Nonetheless; IDOs increasingly rely on communities to identify and distribute support to vulnerable children. This paper utilizes vertical ethnographic approaches to map and compare the gendered moral assumptions that shaped community; state; and international conceptions of childhood and vulnerability and responses to vulnerable children in border communities in Malawi and Mozambique. It argues that a gendered lens on childhood and vulnerability reveals both the gender inequitable assumptions underlying international and community childhood and vulnerability frameworks; and the urgent need for gendered analyses of childhood and vulnerability that engage honestly with people's lived realities; opportunities; and social relations. These analyses would explicitly link efforts to improve children's lives to gendered analyses of the local; national; and international social and political economic systems that differentially shape survival strategies and opportunities-and people's judgments of the morality of these strategies-for females and males

Orphans as a window on the AIDS epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa: initial results and implications of a study in Uganda

Provisional estimates from a Save the Children Fund enumeration study in four Ugandan districts indicate that the total number of orphans (one or both parents missing) ranges between 620;000 and 1;200;000. Needs assessments with guardians and local administrators show that although extended family networks are absorbing these children according to traditional rules; they may be vulnerable to increased mortality due to economic and health stresses on their caretakers; many of whom are elderly persons. The orphan burden will increase in Uganda and other Sub-Saharan African countries over the next few years. Allocation of additional national and international resources must be considered to avert breakdowns in community and familial support systems and consequent increases in under 5 mortality. The orphan burden is a window on the potential for massive social breakdown and dislocation in Sub-Saharan Africa resulting from high AIDS-related mortality. Methodologies for data collection and planning that use indigenous political systems must be built quickly to avert disaster