ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. It focuses on the issue of young people’s empowerment. The part addresses the situation of street children and child labour in the developing countries of the southern hemisphere characterised by the divorce between economic and social policies. It analyses the political mobilisation of the young people of Slovakia in 1989 and, particularly since 1993 with the shift from a centralised state and command economy, their civic or public participation in a post-communist society and the role of non-governmental organisations in nurturing a democracy. The part explains the political role of urban, black, South African youth from the turbulence of the movement towards and arrival at an anti-apartheid society into the 1990s. It identifies the exploitation and marginalisation of children and young people in the Third World as a global problem.
