Research Projects

Implementation of Child Rights Convention
as Legal Empowerment of the Poor:
Norm-Generating Processes in Education as Means for Change

Anna-Karin Bergman
Department of Sociology of Law

anna-karin.bergman@lucsus.lu.se

This project focuses on Legal Empowerment of children through the implementation of Child Rights in and through education. A central part of LEP is the effort of changing formal (rules, regulations, policies, etc.), as well as, informal norms (e.g. teacher-student relationships, child marriages, child labour, etc.). In Sociology of Law language this is done through a “norm-generating process”. Changing norms on a formal (legal) as well as on an informal (social) level is a crucial element and prerequisite for legal empowerment of the poor and excluded; hence, the overall aim of this project is to investigate what factors are needed in order to change these norms, i.e. investigate the “norm-generating processes” for empowering children. Empowering children may be done in a number of ways; however, this project will focus on empowering children in and through education. The project will hence utilise an empirical approach using one of Sida’s International Training Programme (ITP): “Child Rights, Classroom and School Management”, as an empirical framework. Through the ITP Child Rights, Classroom and School Management a number of Change Agents (209 from 25 countries), representing state, regional and local level, have been trained to initiate norm-generating processes on all levels of society, and through this enhance the possibility to implement children’s rights, hence promoting the legal empowering of children in and through education. Specific areas and schools in India and Zambia will function as case studies.

Established Property Rights Systems as a Prerequisite for Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Ellen Hillbom
Department of Economic History

ellen.hillbom@ekh.lu.se

Established and enforced property rights are a fundamental prerequisite for all four aspects (economic, environmental, social, and institutional) of sustainable development. The aim of this research project is to investigate what happens when the multitude of customary property rights systems, generally built on some variation of communal property rights regimes, that are found in the local communities in sub-Saharan Africa come into conflict with statutory property rights moulded around the predominantly western notion of private property. The project hopes to contribute to a reconciliation of the perceived conflict between the customary, stereotyped as “traditional African communal property rights” and the statutory property right systems that are considered to introduce “modern private property”. It is also a reconciliation between the local sub-Sahara African communities on the one hand and the national and international communities on the other hand.

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LEP: Informal Labour and Social Policy

Johan Sandberg
Department of Sociology

johan.sandberg@soc.lu.se

This project focuses on the relationship between informal labour and poverty. It seeks to enlarge the analysis traditionally focused on labour rights and policies for non-agricultural labour by moving beyond the requirement of formal employment and also including subsistence farmers and agricultural workers. The main objective is to analyze the feasibility of them having access to enlarged public social protection and insurance programs “before” being transformed into formal workers. That is, formalisation begins with rather than prescribes the inclusion of workers in social policy programs. The objective is to undertake a country case study (Uruguay) in order to theoretically and empirically analyze the complex relationship between informal labour and poverty in terms of social policy. In addition, it seeks to theoretically explore the feasibility of alternative ways of social policy inclusion (to be developed in parallel of ongoing international efforts towards formalisation of labour).

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Environmental Global Justice and E-waste: the case of Cameroon

Yahia Mohamed-Mahmood
Department of Social and Economic Geography

Yahia.Mohamed-Mahmood@keg.lu.se

Introduction
The growing electronic waste and its consequent implications for the planet have attracted the attention of activists, politicians and academia in recent years. The outcomes of this development are numerous, complex and involve a wide array of issues. These, range from socio-economic to ecological consequences. The initial idea of reusing electronic waste in the developing world was perceived as a double solution. On one hand, it would free the developed world from the expensive process of recycling and, on the other hand, it would give the people in the developing world a first access to ‘new technologies’.  Despite the “good intention” of this paradigm, the reuse of e-waste to enhance Africa’s economic and social development is far from being a successful one (Bates et al 2008). There is still disagreement on the magnitude and consequences of this phenomenon. What is certain, though, is the increase of outflows of hazardous electronic waste from industrial to developing countries. Several West African countries are playing the role of the world's dumping ground (see for instance Osibanjo & Nnorom 2007). Due to its hazardous nature the phenomenon has unavoidably led to issues of environmental inequalities and environmental justice. Several studies suggest that poor people and minorities are more likely to live in polluted areas or be exposed to hazardous waste (Szazs & Meuser 2000, Brown & Fergusson 1995, Bullard 1993). Taking its starting point in these ideas, this project will map and evaluate the meaning and consequences of electronic waste in Cameroon. The study will focus on several issues that are central for the proper understanding of this phenomenon. These are, among others, the magnitude of the flows, their composition, the stakeholders involved in these flows, as well as their socio-economic and ecological consequences for Cameroon.

Specific aims and research questions
This project seeks to map the flows of e-waste into Cameroon and analyze, taking into consideration opportunities and threats, its socio-economic and ecological impacts. The study will focus on the nature of the inflows and the magnitude of their impacts. The main research questions are:

a) What are the origins of the e-waste?
b) What are the main recipient locations in Cameroon?
c) Which are the main actors/stakeholders behind e-waste flows to Cameroon?
d) What are the main arguments/reasons justifying these flows?
e) Which are the main actors/stakeholders involved in the e-waste business in
    Cameroon?
f) What are the most visible socio-economic and environmental effects?

Each of these six questions will be operationalized into more specific questions that will serve as a basis for this pilot study. From these pillars both the methodological and the theoretical frameworks will be derived.

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Empowerment through Legal Education

Christoffer Wong
Faculty of Law

Christoffer.Wong@jur.lu.se  

With the financial support of Sida, the Faculty of Law, Lund University, has since the late 1990s been managing an extensive programme entitled “Strengthening Legal Education in Vietnam”, aimed at contributing to the development of legal education in Vietnam, in cooperation with Hanoi University and Ho Chi Minh City Law University. Under the heading Legal Empowerment of the Poor the Faculty will build on the experiences gained from this Vietnam project and specifically focus on two main threads: (1) the spill-over effect of legal education and (2) empowerment through knowledge. 

The first exploratory project builds on the Faculty’s experiences regarding sensitive issues, i.e. issues that are too sensitive for there to be an open and public debate. Some examples of such issues are questions dealing with human rights, gender equality or corruption. The Faculty’s experience shows that an acceptable way to approach these sensitive subjects is to begin more cautiously with what is considered a more technical discussion on the teaching of such subjects within the curriculum. This has produced a certain spill-over effect in that the sensitive subjects are then studied in their own rights. This project will reflect on the process in terms of the empowerment of the poor and carry out preliminary inquiries on the feasibility of applying a similar technique to countries at different stages of development, in first place South East Asian countries such as Laos, Burma and Cambodia.

The second exploratory project deals with the transfer of knowledge and builds on the hypothesis that one may be empowered through other’s knowledge bout oneself. In the present context, it is maintained that Vietnam will benefit from being understood and taken seriously if others (e.g. individual investors, trading partners or international organizations) are able to acquire more knowledge about the country and its legal system. This exploratory project will therefore aim at identifying efficient ways of disseminating knowledge about the Vietnamese legal system. Once an efficient modus operandi is established, the method can be evaluated as a step to its application in a wider context.  

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Child Rights and Sexual and Reproductive Health in Sub-Saharan Africa

Christina Halling
Social Medicine and Global Health

Christina.Halling@med.lu.se

This project is a pilot study of value for a planned dissertation project on child rights and sexual and reproductive health in sub-Saharan Africa. The working title of the dissertation project is “Child Rights at the International, National and Local Level. Translating the Convention on the Rights of the Child into National Policy and Local Practice against Sexual Abuse in Uganda”.

The pilot study will focus on the question: How is the human rights perspective translated into national policy against child sexual abuse in Uganda? An explorative study of the national translation will be effectuated. The study consists in an interpretation of what national policy documents have been formulated on the area of sexual abuse to meet the intentions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Child sexual abuse is a problem of several policy areas, e.g. health policy, HIV/AIDS policy, social policy, child policy and policies in the field of women’s rights. The study will result in an overview of national policy on the area of child sexual abuse.

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