Academic literature on the topic 'Children – Legal status, laws, etc. – Namibia'

The article is devoted to the sociological analysis of the situation with bullying (prevalence, dynamics, connection with socio-demographic indicators) and counteraction to it (formal legal framework and real practices) in the modern educational space of Ukraine. According to 2018, the number of systematic bullers is 12.2%, the number of systematic victims — 15.7%. Thus, in reality, it is not about 67% (two thirds) of children and adolescents, as noted in the justification of many anti-bullying initiatives, but about a much smaller number of people who, however, are systematically bully or bullied by others. The connection between bullying and gender, financial status, health status, emotional state, and the presence of violence from adult family members was analyzed. The legal framework for combating bullying is considered. It is shown that significant obstacles to the implementation of anti-bullying laws are formalism, lack of qualified psychological staff and the practice of concealing the facts of bullying by the management of educational institutions. The article provides a list of real steps to combat bullying, which should lead to positive changes (online training, information campaigns, hotlines, etc.). International data on the evaluation of prevention programs are given. To be more effective, these programs must combine systematic monitoring and targeting of children and adolescents at high risk. Anti-bullying programs should not so much completely eliminate the phenomenon of bullying as bring it out of the norm, which is important on the way to the humanization of education. The necessity of further sociological researches in the field of cyberbullying is substantiated, as well as the necessity of assessing the real position of teachers.

Contemporary society is concerned about successful functioning of its members and their effective participation in social interrelations therefore the adaptation of children living in foster homes is perceived as a relevant social issue. In the context of developing democratic ideas increasing attention is being paid towards the problem of adaptive behavior and its development in children without parental care. It is influenced by important social, political, value and legal changes having occurred in the last several decades in Lithuania in a context of which the attitude towards children without parental care, their social status, foster care and development is also changing. While adopting more laws and resolutions on the issues of child’s foster care, development and healthcare there appear more possibilities to solve a lot of relevant questions in child foster care and training institutions. In the context of democracy increasing attention is paid towards social integration of children living in foster institutions, their involvement and participation into social life. The goals and objectives of Lithuanian educational system reflect the intention to prepare a person for life, who is able to analyze reality individually or with other people, also adequately deal with the problems, plan the future and successfully adapt to the constantly changing, dynamic society. These objectives allow to discover a variety of aspects of the organization of educational activities in foster homes. The problematic issue arises while preparing foster home pupils for independent living: Are the educational system and conditions at foster homes sufficient and adequate in process of preparation for independent life? The article actualizes the educational significance of preparing teenagers for independent life. Interviews with foster home staff evaluate the current situation of foster homes, disclose the education system, work achievements (strengths), discuss the developmental problems and identify deficiencies of preparation for independent living in foster homes. The aim – to assess the preparation of foster home pupils for independent living within the context of foster homes, revealing the positive and improvable aspects of the foster home educator’s point of view. Analyzing the features of foster home preparation for independent living in care institutions, the study involved 17 foster home staff, based on their opinion about their personal work experiences and points of view. In order to understand home educational activities, to review the pupils’ preparation for independent living opportunities, educational reality, to find out and identify problems, provide opportunities for improving the situation, the interview method was used. Instant analysis revealed that home care workers initiated a variety of activities: encourage children to solve problems, analyze situations and make decisions. It is also practiced by demonstration of adult example, analyzing the situation and promoting the search for solutions. Workshops are organized, situations and educational environment is created in which the pupils are encouraged to act independently, provide practical training skills that enable learners to try themselves in different activities (household work, cooking, etc.). However, according to the assessment of the current situation in foster homes, it is clear that there are not optimal functions performed by the formation of practical skills and preparing for independent living of children without parental care. Interviews revealed that foster homes lack „real practices“ when most children are able to buy food, count the money, pay for services, cook, and independence is developed mostly by the potential circumstances. Comments on the survey suggest that the lack of practical activities, funding and real-world examples in foster homes prevent realization of the set goals, implement ideas for youngsters to prepare for independent living, to acquire domestic skills and do not create conditions for independent personal development (learning). Discussing the opportunities for improvement of foster home preparation for independent living, almost unanimously expressed material financial base and the improvement of household demand. Foster home staff believes that the conditions under which pupils can cook themselves face with the real everyday life, keep their own budgets, learn, acquire new knowledge or skills may be one of the most successful assumptions for training (learning) to live independently when they came out foster homes.

The world has become a global village and distance is no more the challenge. The direct impact of this positive change can be seen in interaction of various citizens of different countries belonging to diverse social, cultural and religious background. But cross border movements, inter-country migration and cross border marriages creates a new challenge like inter parental child abduction. In case of cross border broken marriages, there arise various issues like infringement of spouse’s parental rights, parallel conflicting legal disputes in different countries, non participation of various countries to Hague convention for welfare of children, isolation of child in foreign abodes due to connection with Indian soil, etc. Inter parental child abduction is neither considered as an offence, nor it is covered under any statutory laws of India. Like 94 nations, India is not a signatory to The Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, 1980, a multi lateral treaty developed by Hague Conference on Private International Law. Due to its non signatory status the judges of foreign countries do not trust Indian courts and do not permit the parent to take child to India, fearing its non-return. In absence of any international legal instrument, the litigating parents will have to bear unnecessary expenses of visa, travel, litigation, etc and unfortunate child will become a trophy to be won in the clashes of egos of litigating parents.

As the single most successful social-networking Website to date, Facebook has caused a shift in both practice and perception of online socialisation, and its relationship to the offline world. While not the first online social networking service, Facebook’s user base dwarfs its nearest competitors. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation boasts more than 750 million users (Facebook). The currently ailing MySpace claimed a ceiling of 100 million users in 2006 (Cashmore). Further, the accuracy of this number has been contested due to a high proportion of fake or inactive accounts. Facebook by contrast, claims 50% of its user base logs in at least once a day (Facebook). The popular and mainstream uptake of Facebook has shifted social use of the Internet from various and fragmented niche groups towards a common hub or portal around which much everyday Internet use is centred. The implications are many, but this paper will focus on the progress what Mimi Marinucci terms the “Facebook effect” (70) and the evolution of lists as a filtering mechanism representing one’s social zones within Facebook. This is in part inspired by the launch of Google’s new social networking service Google+ which includes “circles” as a fundamental design feature for sorting contacts. Circles are an acknowledgement of the shortcomings of a single, unified friends list that defines the Facebook experience. These lists and circles are both manifestations of the same essential concept: our social lives are, in fact, divided into various zones not defined by an online/offline dichotomy, by fantasy role-play, deviant sexual practices, or other marginal or minority interests. What the lists and circles demonstrate is that even very common, mainstream people occupy different roles in everyday life, and that to be effective social tools, social networking sites must grant users control over their various identities and over who knows what about them. Even so, the very nature of computer-based social tools lead to problematic definitions of identities and relationships using discreet terms, in contrast to more fluid, performative constructions of an individual and their relations to others. Building the Monolith In 1995, Sherry Turkle wrote that “the Internet has become a significant social laboratory for experimenting with the constructions and reconstructions of self that characterize postmodern life” (180). Turkle describes the various deliberate acts of personnae creation possible online in contrast to earlier constraints placed upon the “cycling through different identities” (179). In the past, Turkle argues, “lifelong involvement with families and communities kept such cycling through under fairly stringent control” (180). In effect, Turkle was documenting the proliferation of identity games early adopters of Internet technologies played through various means. Much of what Turkle focused on were MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and MOOs (MUD Object Oriented), explicit play-spaces that encouraged identity-play of various kinds. Her contemporary Howard Rheingold focused on what may be described as the more “true to life” communities of the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) (1–38). In particular, Rheingold explored a community established around the shared experience of parenting, especially of young children. While that community was not explicitly built on the notion of role-play, the parental identity was an important quality of community members. Unlike contemporary social media networks, these early communities were built on discreet platforms. MUDs, MOOs, Bulletin Board Systems, UseNet Groups and other early Internet communication platforms were generally hosted independently of one another, and even had to be dialled into via modem separately in some cases (such as the WELL). The Internet was a truly disparate entity in 1995. The discreetness of each community supported the cordoning off of individual roles or identities between them. Thus, an individual could quite easily be “Pete” a member of the parental WELL group and “Gorak the Destroyer,” a role-player on a fantasy MUD without the two roles ever being associated with each other. As Turkle points out, even within each MUD ample opportunity existed to play multiple characters (183–192). With only a screen name and associated description to identify an individual within the MUD environment, nothing technical existed to connect one player’s multiple identities, even within the same community. As the Internet has matured, however, the tendency has been shifting towards monolithic hubs, a notion of collecting all of “the Internet” together. From a purely technical and operational perspective, this has led to the emergence of the ISP (Internet service provider). Users can make a connection to one point, and then be connected to everything “on the Net” instead of individually dialling into servers and services one at a time as was the case in the early 1980s with companies such as Prodigy, the Source, CompuServe, and America On-Line (AOL). The early information service providers were largely walled gardens. A CompuServe user could only access information on the CompuServe network. Eventually the Internet became the network of choice and services migrated to it. Standards such as HTTP for Web page delivery and SMTP for email became established and dominate the Internet today. Technically, this has made the Internet much easier to use. The services that have developed on this more rationalised and unified platform have also tended toward monolithic, centralised architectures, despite the Internet’s apparent fundamental lack of a hierarchy. As the Internet replaced the closed networks, the wider Web of HTTP pages, forums, mailing lists and other forms of Internet communication and community thrived. Perhaps they required slightly more technological savvy than the carefully designed experience of walled-garden ISPs such as AOL, but these fora and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) rooms still provided the discreet environments within which to role-play. An individual could hold dozens of login names to as many different communities. These various niches could be simply hobby sites and forums where a user would deploy their identity as model train enthusiast, musician, or pet owner. They could also be explicitly about role-play, continuing the tradition of MUDs and MOOs into the new millennium. Pseudo- and polynymity were still very much part of the Internet experience. Even into the early parts of the so-called Web 2.0 explosion of more interactive Websites which allowed for easier dialog between site owner and viewer, a given identity would be very much tied to a single site, blog or even individual comments. There was no “single sign on” to link my thread from a music forum to the comments I made on a videogame blog to my aquarium photos at an image gallery site. Today, Facebook and Google, among others, seek to change all that. The Facebook Effect Working from a psychological background Turkle explored the multiplicity of online identities as a valuable learning, even therapeutic, experience. She assessed the experiences of individuals who were coming to terms with aspects of their own personalities, from simple shyness to exploring their sexuality. In “You Can’t Front on Facebook,” Mimi Marinucci summarizes an analysis of online behaviour by another psychologist, John Suler (67–70). Suler observed an “online disinhibition effect” characterised by users’ tendency to express themselves more openly online than offline (321). Awareness of this effect was drawn (no pun intended) into popular culture by cartoonist Mike Krahulik’s protagonist John Gabriel. Although Krahulik’s summation is straight to the point, Suler offers a more considered explanation. There are six general reasons for the online disinhibition effect: being anonymous, being invisible, the communications being out of sync, the strange sensation that a virtual interlocutor is all in the mind of the user, the general sense that the online world simply is not real and the minimisation of status and authority (321–325). Of the six, the notion of anonymity is most problematic, as briefly explored above in the case of AOL. The role of pseudonymity has been explored in more detail in Ruch, and will be considered with regard to Facebook and Google+ below. The Facebook effect, Marinucci argues, mitigates all six of these issues. Though Marinucci explains the mitigation of each factor individually, her final conclusion is the most compelling reason: “Facebook often facilitates what is best described as an integration of identities, and this integration of identities in turn functions as something of an inhibiting factor” (73). Ruch identifies this phenomenon as the “aggregation of identities” (219). Similarly, Brady Robards observes that “social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook collapse the entire array of social relationships into just one category, that of ‘Friend’” (20). Unlike earlier community sites, Ruch notes “Facebook rejects both the mythical anonymity of the Internet, but also the actual pseudo- or polynonymous potential of the technologies” (219). Essentially, Facebook works to bring the offline social world online, along with all the conventional baggage that accompanies the individual’s real-world social life. Facebook, and now Google+, present a hard, dichotomous approach to online identity: anonymous and authentic. Their socially networked individual is the “real” one, using a person’s given name, and bringing all (or as many as the sites can capture) their contacts from the offline world into the online one, regardless of context. The Facebook experience is one of “friending” everyone one has any social contact with into one homogeneous group. Not only is Facebook avoiding the multiple online identities that interested Turkle, but it is disregarding any multiplicity of identity anywhere, including any online/offline split. David Kirkpatrick reports Mark Zuckerberg’s rejection of this construction of identity is explained by his belief that “You have one identity … having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” (199). Arguably, Zuckerberg’s calls for accountability through identity continue a perennial concern for anonymity online fuelled by “on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog” style moral panics. Over two decades ago Lindsy Van Gelder recounted the now infamous case of “Joan and Alex” (533) and Julian Dibbell recounted “a rape in cyberspace” (11). More recent anxieties concern the hacking escapades of Anonymous and LulzSec. Zuckerberg’s approach has been criticised by Christopher Poole, the founder of 4Chan—a bastion of Internet anonymity. During his keynote presentation at South by SouthWest 2011 Poole argued that Zuckerberg “equates anonymity with a lack of authenticity, almost a cowardice.” Yet in spite of these objections, Facebook has mainstream appeal. From a social constructivist perspective, this approach to identity would be satisfying the (perceived?) need for a mainstream, context-free, general social space online to cater for the hundreds of millions of people who now use the Internet. There is no specific, pre-defined reason to join Facebook in the way there is a particular reason to join a heavy metal music message board. Facebook is catering to the need to bring “real” social life online generally, with “real” in this case meaning “offline and pre-existing.” Very real risks of missing “real life” social events (engagements, new babies, party invitations etc) that were shared primarily via Facebook became salient to large groups of individuals not consciously concerned with some particular facet of identity performance. The commercial imperatives towards monolithic Internet and identity are obvious. Given that both Facebook and Google+ are in the business of facilitating the sale of advertising, their core business value is the demographic information they can sell to various companies for target advertising. Knowing a user’s individual identity and tastes is extremely important to those in the business of selling consumers what they currently want as well as predicting their future desires. The problem with this is the dawning realisation that even for the average person, role-playing is part of everyday life. We simply aren’t the same person in all contexts. None of the roles we play need to be particularly scandalous for this to be true, but we have different comfort zones with people that are fuelled by context. Suler proposes and Marinucci confirms that inhibition may be just as much part of our authentic self as the uninhibited expression experienced in more anonymous circumstances. Further, different contexts will inform what we inhibit and what we express. It is not as though there is a simple binary between two different groups and two different personal characteristics to oscillate between. The inhibited personnae one occupies at one’s grandmother’s home is a different inhibited self one plays at a job interview or in a heated discussion with faculty members at a university. One is politeness, the second professionalism, the third scholarly—yet they all restrain the individual in different ways. The Importance of Control over Circles Google+ is Google’s latest foray into the social networking arena. Its previous ventures Orkut and Google Buzz did not fare well, both were variously marred by legal issues concerning privacy, security, SPAM and hate groups. Buzz in particular fell afoul of associating Google accounts with users” real life identities, and (as noted earlier), all the baggage that comes with it. “One user blogged about how Buzz automatically added her abusive ex-boyfriend as a follower and exposed her communications with a current partner to him. Other bloggers commented that repressive governments in countries such as China or Iran could use Buzz to expose dissidents” (Novak). Google+ takes a different approach to its predecessors and its main rival, Facebook. Facebook allows for the organisation of “friends” into lists. Individuals can span more than one list. This is an exercise analogous to what Erving Goffman refers to as “audience segregation” (139). According to the site’s own statistics the average Facebook user has 130 friends, we anticipate it would be time-consuming to organise one’s friends according to real life social contexts. Yet without such organisation, Facebook overlooks the social structures and concomitant behaviours inherent in everyday life. Even broad groups offer little assistance. For example, an academic’s “Work People” list may include the Head of Department as well as numerous other lecturers with whom a workspace is shared. There are things one might share with immediate colleagues that should not be shared with the Head of Department. As Goffman states, “when audience segregation fails and an outsider happens upon a performance that was not meant for him, difficult problems in impression management arise” (139). By homogenising “friends” and social contexts users are either inhibited or run the risk of some future awkward encounters. Google+ utilises “circles” as its method for organising contacts. The graphical user interface is intuitive, facilitated by an easy drag and drop function. Use of “circles” already exists in the vocabulary used to describe our social structures. “List” by contrast reduces the subject matter to simple data. The utility of Facebook’s friends lists is hindered by usability issues—an unintuitive and convoluted process that was added to Facebook well after its launch, perhaps a reaction to privacy concerns rather than a genuine attempt to emulate social organisation. For a cogent breakdown of these technical and design problems see Augusto Sellhorn. Organising friends into lists is a function offered by Facebook, but Google+ takes a different approach: organising friends in circles is a central feature; the whole experience is centred around attempting to mirror the social relations of real life. Google’s promotional video explains the centrality of emulating “real life relationships” (Google). Effectively, Facebook and Google+ have adopted two different systemic approaches to dealing with the same issue. Facebook places the burden of organising a homogeneous mass of “friends” into lists on the user as an afterthought of connecting with another user. In contrast, Google+ builds organisation into the act of connecting. Whilst Google+’s approach is more intuitive and designed to facilitate social networking that more accurately reflects how real life social relationships are structured, it suffers from forcing direct correlation between an account and the account holder. That is, use of Google+ mandates bringing online the offline. Google+ operates a real names policy and on the weekend of 23 July 2011 suspended a number of accounts for violation of Google’s Community Standards. A suspension notice posted by Violet Blue reads: “After reviewing your profile, we determined the name you provided violates our Community Standards.” Open Source technologist Kirrily Robert polled 119 Google+ users about their experiences with the real names policy. The results posted to her on blog reveal that users desire pseudonymity, many for reasons of privacy and/or safety rather than the lack of integrity thought by Zuckerberg. boyd argues that Google’s real names policy is an abuse of power and poses danger to those users employing “nicks” for reasons including being a government employment or the victim of stalking, rape or domestic abuse. A comprehensive list of those at risk has been posted to the Geek Feminism Wiki (ironically, the Wiki utilises “Connect”, Facebook’s attempt at a single sign on solution for the Web that connects users’ movements with their Facebook profile). Facebook has a culture of real names stemming from its early adopters drawn from trusted communities, and this culture became a norm for that service (boyd). But as boyd also points out, “[r]eal names are by no means universal on Facebook.” Google+ demands real names, a demand justified by rhetoric of designing a social networking system that is more like real life. “Real”, in this case, is represented by one’s given name—irrespective of the authenticity of one’s pseudonym or the complications and dangers of using one’s given name. Conclusion There is a multiplicity of issues concerning social networks and identities, privacy and safety. This paper has outlined the challenges involved in moving real life to the online environment and the contests in trying to designate zones of social context. Where some earlier research into the social Internet has had a positive (even utopian) feel, the contemporary Internet is increasingly influenced by powerful and competing corporations. As a result, the experience of the Internet is not necessarily as flexible as Turkle or Rheingold might have envisioned. Rather than conducting identity experimentation or exercising multiple personnae, we are increasingly obligated to perform identity as it is defined by the monolithic service providers such as Facebook and Google+. This is not purely an indictment of Facebook or Google’s corporate drive, though they are obviously implicated, but has as much to do with the new social practice of “being online.” So, while there are myriad benefits to participating in this new social context, as Poole noted, the “cost of failure is really high when you’re contributing as yourself.” Areas for further exploration include the implications of Facebook positioning itself as a general-purpose user authentication tool whereby users can log into a wide array of Websites using their Facebook credentials. If Google were to take a similar action the implications would be even more convoluted, given the range of other services Google offers, from GMail to the Google Checkout payment service. While the monolithic centralisation of these services will have obvious benefits, there will be many more subtle problems which must be addressed. References Blue, Violet. “Google Plus Deleting Accounts en Masse: No Clear Answers.” zdnet.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/google-plus-deleting-accounts-en-masse-no-clear-answers/56›. boyd, danah. “Real Names Policies Are an Abuse of Power.” zephoria.org (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html›. Cashmore, Pete. “MySpace Hits 100 Million Accounts.” mashable.com (2006). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://mashable.com/2006/08/09/myspace-hits-100-million-accounts›. Dibble, Julian. My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1998. Facebook. “Fact Sheet.” Facebook (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistic›. Geek Feminism Wiki. “Who Is Harmed by a Real Names Policy?” 2011. 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Real_Names%22_policy› Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1959. Google. “The Google+ Project: Explore Circles.” Youtube.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocPeAdpe_A8›. Kirkpatrick, David. The Facebook Effect. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Marinucci, Mimi. “You Can’t Front on Facebook.” Facebook and Philosophy. Ed. Dylan Wittkower. Chicago & La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 2010. 65–74. Novak, Peter. “Privacy Commissioner Reviewing Google Buzz.” CBC News: Technology and Science (2010). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2010/02/16/google-buzz-privacy.html›. Poole, Christopher. Keynote presentation. South by SouthWest. Texas, Austin, 2011. Robards, Brady. “Negotiating Identity and Integrity on Social Network Sites for Educators.” International Journal for Educational Integrity 6.2 (2010): 19–23. Robert, Kirrily. “Preliminary Results of My Survey of Suspended Google Accounts.” 2011. 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://infotrope.net/2011/07/25/preliminary-results-of-my-survey-of-suspended-google-accounts/›. Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993. Ruch, Adam. “The Decline of Pseudonymity.” Posthumanity. Eds. Adam Ruch and Ewan Kirkland. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary.net Press, 2010: 211–220. Sellhorn, Augusto. “Facebook Friend Lists Suck When Compared to Google+ Circles.” sellmic.com (2011). 10 Aug. 2011 ‹http://sellmic.com/blog/2011/07/01/facebook-friend-lists-suck-when-compared-to-googleplus-circles›. Suler, John. “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” CyberPsychology and Behavior 7 (2004): 321–326. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Van Gelder, Lindsy. “The Strange Case of the Electronic Lover.” Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices Ed. Rob Kling. New York: Academic Press, 1996: 533–46.

Prior to 1990, very few countries in the world offered special protection to child witnesses interfacing with the justice system. There were no legal provisions permitting testimonial accommodations for children in court. The courtroom experience was significantly traumatic for the children. With the international focus shifting from protecting and upholding the rights of the accused in the courtroom towards a more victim-centred approach, various international and regional instruments have strongly dvocated that children deserve special protection because of their vulnerability. In order for the courts to be able to elicit accurate evidence from the child without further traumatizing the child, research has shown that the child needs assistance. An intermediary may be defined as a person who facilitates communication between the child and the courtroom in a manner that takes into account the child‟s cognitive and developmental limitations. The thesis was prompted by the need to make a contribution to the currently limited body of literature on the intermediary systems in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia by investigating how the systems can be improved and sustained in a way that helps to protect the child witness in court. Despite the problems the South African courts have had in identifying the appropriate interpretation of its intermediary legislation, the country emerges as a clear leader for the steps it took by creating a positive legal framework within which child protection issues are addressed and introducing the concept of the intermediary. This concept proved to be an inspiration to its neighbours, Namibia and Zimbabwe. The influence of the South African intermediary legislation is evident in the Namibian and Zimbabwean legislation. Although Namibian legislators have drafted laws that permit intermediary assistance in court, there are as yet no intermediaries appointed. In Ethiopia, although there is no discernible intermediary legislation, the country has managed to establish an intermediary system. As a result of the analysis conducted, it is evident that the efficacy of the intermediary system is dependent on the presence of an enabling legislation, its clarity and ease of interpretation, the sensitisation of court role players on child vulnerabilities, the significance of intermediary assistance, and finally a government's commitment towards the implementation process.

“No civilized society, regards children as accountable for their actions to the same extent as adults”.1 In the absence of a justice system applicable exclusively to children in conflict with the law in South Africa, children are subjected to the same rigours of the criminal law applicable to adults in South Africa. “States Parties recognize the right of every child alleged as, accused of, or recognized as having infringed the penal law to be treated in a manner consistent with the promotion of the child's sense of dignity and worth, which reinforces the child's respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others and which takes into account the child's age and the desirability of promoting the child's reintegration and the child's assuming a constructive role in society”.2 As a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, South Africa has a duty to ensure that the children in conflict with the law are treated in a manner that gives effect to the protectionary ideals espoused in the Convention. In July 2000, the South African Law Commission [Project 106] released the Child Justice Bill3, together with its Report on Juvenile Justice. Because the child justice system at present is not governed by legislation, uncertainty and inconsistency are constant dangers. We need legislation to ensure that all children in conflict with the law are dealt with consistently, fairly and appropriately. The question that needs to be answered in this treatise, is whether the Child Justice Act 75 of 2008, which comes into effect on 01 April 2010, is a legislative framework that incorporates due process rights together with the rights of children who is alleged to have committed an offence, to be protected and treated in a manner appropriate to their age.

In this thesis, we present the outcomes of a research conducted on children's domestic labor in Haiti. In addition to being engaged in housekeeping work -- which has a negative impact on access to basic education -- children in domesticity are generally victims of harmful disciplinary measures as well. Consequently, our main objective is to expose the actual norms and practices regarding the education and the physical treatment of young domestic workers.
Based on legal pluralism, the approach undertaken during this research combines both theoretical and empirical research, and focuses on law and norms existing at multiple levels.
First, we present the information gathered from our theoretical approach. After exploring the notion of "Haitian child domestic servant", sketching social profiles of actors engaged in the practice of domesticity, and identifying the most significant contingent factors, we underline the principal national and international norms guaranteeing children the right to education as well as to physical integrity.
Second, we explore the local norms related to the education and to physical treatment of young domestic servants through the results of empirical research carried out in Haiti in the form of observation and interviews with relevant actors.
We conclude by identifying the framework of norms that govern the behaviour of families that host domestic children. Understanding that framework allows jurists and other actors to identify and implement the actions more likely to improve the quality of life of child domestic workers.

Honourable Cassiem Saloojee, MP chaired the workshop. He noted that the workshop was intended to provide an opportunity to assess several recent research studies related to children and development in South Africa. People who had been invited included MPs, members of NGOs and CBOs and government officials. A list of participants is attached.

The legal framework and legislation governing the rights of the children have become of great concern in modern societies, particularly, in the area of criminal justice and human rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child are basic international and regional conventions regulating the rights of the children and include how to deal with children in conflict with the law. States parties to these conventions are required to take appropriate measures, which includes enactment of legislation to give effect to these rights. Legislative instruments must address the following issues: The principle of the best interest of the child; the age of criminal responsibility; restorative justice; diversion; and the trials of children in conflict with the law. The above-mentioned instrument require and emphasise the use of an alternative approach in respect of the children who are in conflict with law. In this research a comparative approach is used to compare the South African and South Sudanese child justice legislative instruments. The legislative instruments pertaining to child justice in both countries are set out and compared. It is concluded that the South African legislative instruments are more aligned to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Recommendations and proposals are made to enact to adopt in South Sudan new legislative measures and provisions aim to afford more protection to children in conflict with the law and to strike a better balance between rights of a child and victim of crimes.

Child participation and the right of children to be heard in matters that directly affect them, including in judicial and administrative matters, is a right that is entrenched in a number of international and regional instruments. This right is also entrenched in the South African Constitution that provides for children to be legally represented, at State expense, in civil proceedings affecting them and this includes divorce proceedings. However, this constitutional right is limited to those circumstances where a substantial injustice would otherwise result should such legal representation not be afforded. This thesis examined how the voices of children can be heard during divorce proceedings and makes recommendations as to when children involved in divorce proceedings should be granted legal representation at State expense.