ABSTRACT
This book has examined how interconnected global processes are affecting the lives of young people. The effects are both negative and positive. While there are thousands of young people engaged in conflict, sex work and exploitative labour, whose vulnerability may be attributable to economic and social processes that entrench poverty, it is also true that, at a global scale, children are more likely to survive into adulthood than in the past and more likely to gain literacy. In international circles children and youth are also more likely to be listened to and taken seriously, as people with rights and the capacity to act, as well as with needs. Furthermore, young people are no longer seen as the exclusive constituency of children’s non-governmental organisations (NGOs), but are recognised as intended beneficiaries of wider development interventions. There is some momentum both to improve the situations in which young people live, and to involve them in improving their own lives.
