ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights key development indicators of child well-being in Southeast Asia, and focuses on how poor children in the region are typically socially constructed as victims within development discourse. It presents how programs that have been designed to protect and 'save' them are often based on preconceived, patronizing Western ideas that reinscribe their victimhood. The chapter explores the lives and aspirations of marginalized children, including street children in Indonesia and Cambodia, children in post-tsunami Aceh, and forced migrant children from Myanmar who are growing up on the borders in Thailand, China and Malaysia. It also explores different sociocultural norms and styles of child-rearing that challenge Western conceptions of 'family' and 'childhood.' The importance of children and youth in international development agendas was validated by the almost universal ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Many socio-economic factors underpin development issues relating to children's well-being.
