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12. June/July 2018 Issue
- Author:
- Kirsten E. Schulze, Brian Dodwell, Dakota Foster, Daniel Milton, David Sterman, and Robin Simcox
- Publication Date:
- 07-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- CTC Sentinel
- Institution:
- The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
- Abstract:
- This summer marks the end of an era for us. Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price, the Combating Terrorism Center’s longest-serving director, is retiring after 20 years of service in the Army, the last six at the helm of the CTC. During that time, he was a tireless champion for the CTC and its staff and cemented its status as one of the leading research institutions in the terrorism studies field. In a conversation with Brian Dodwell, who is taking over as director, LTC Price reflects on his service at the CTC and the essential need for rigorous research to understand the evolving threat landscape. There is concern that Islamic State-linked terror is on the rise in Southeast Asia. On Sunday, May 13, 2018, three churches in Surabaya, Indonesia, were targeted by suicide bombers comprising one single family of six. The following day, a family of five rode two motorbikes to the entrance of the city’s police headquarters where they blew themselves up. The attacks saw the confluence of several trends in jihadi terrorist plotting—an increased reliance on family networks and an increased embrace of women and children in combat roles. In our cover article, Kirsten Schulze outlines the evolving threat from pro-Islamic State militants in Southeast Asia’s most populous country. Dakota Foster and Daniel Milton build on the the CTC’s previous analysis on the personnel records of just over 4,100 Islamic State foreign fighters to focus on what the records reveal about the smaller subset of 267 children. David Sterman also analyzes the Islamic State’s personnel records to compare and contrast the profile of recruits with previous experience in Libya and Afghanistan. Robin Simcox documents an alleged terrorist conspiracy by an all-female cell guided by an Islamic State cybercoach to plot attacks in the Paris area in 2016.
- Topic:
- Terrorism, Children, Counter-terrorism, Women, Islamic State, Jihad, Foreign Fighters, and Child Soldiers
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, Europe, South Asia, Indonesia, France, Libya, North Africa, and Southeast Asia
13. Out of school children in India: Some insights on what we know and what we don't
- Author:
- Kiran Bhatty, Radhika Saraf, and Vrinda Gupta
- Publication Date:
- 03-2017
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Policy Research, India
- Abstract:
- The focus of the study, and the analysis in this paper, is on the issue of student attendance, in order to capture its extent – both continuous and sporadic - as well as to highlight its relevance in the larger meaning of an “out-of-school child”. The analysis is focused on possible household and school factors that can explain the variation in attendance across social groups and gender as well as across school type. In other words, this paper is an attempt to i) provide a more accurate estimate of OOSC using both household and school level data on children as well as an expanded definition of dropped out by including sporadic attendance data; ii) document the variation in attendance patterns by social groups and iii) unpack reasons for low attendance based on a set of household and school level factors. Accordingly, after describing the research and data collection, the paper is divided into two parts: Part I describes the survey findings and estimates of OOSC and attendance patterns of students and teachers. Part II provides an analysis of the links between child attendance and various household and school level factors.
- Topic:
- Education, Infrastructure, Children, and Child Poverty
- Political Geography:
- South Asia, India, and Asia
14. Infrastructure, Gender and Violence: Women and Slum Sanitation Inequalities in Delhi
- Author:
- Susan Esme Chaplin and Reetika Kalita
- Publication Date:
- 10-2017
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Centre for Policy Research, India
- Abstract:
- In Delhi, as in many other Indian cities, millions of men, women and children who live in slums and informal settlements haveto daily confront the lack of adequate sanitation facilities. These sanitation inequalities have a greater impact on the health and socioeconomic status of women and girls because of their greater social vulnerability to sexual violence; there is also the role played by biology in their need for privacy, safety and cleanliness. Men and boys, on the other hand, tend to use public urinals and open defecation (OD) sites generally more frequently, because their need for privacy during these sanitation activities is not such a cause for concern. In addition, women and girls are forced every day to risk using precarious spaces for their sanitation activities that may expose them to gender-based violence and harassment and not satisfy their biological and socio-cultural needs. These urban sanitation inequalities also negatively impact the time women have available for paid employment as well as their daily domestic responsibilities, as they have to spend each morning queuing for toilets or getting up earlier to go with other women to OD sites. For adolescent girls this can often mean being late for school, which threatens their education and future life choices. India failed to meet Millennium Development Goal No. 7 (adopted by the United Nations in 2000) relating to halving the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation. In terms of toilet usage across India, the Census 2011 found that 81 percent of urban households had a private toilet or latrine. But when it came to slum households, only 66 percent had a toilet, meaning that 34 percent had to either use a community or public toilet or resort to OD (Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation & National Buildings Organisations 2013, p. 60). In reality, there are an estimated 41 million urban dwellers still practising OD because of a lack of access to improved sanitation (WaterAid 2016). OD is a compulsion, not a choice, and creates particular risks and imposes a variety of harms upon women and children that men and boys do not suffer. Who or what is responsible for such socioeconomic consequences of the lack of adequate sanitation infrastructure in Indian cities which perpetuate gender inequalities? How do harms like gender-based violence impact the everyday lives of women and girls living in slums in particular? This project report examines these issues using the notion of infrastructural violence and then examines the harms and suffering caused by a lack of sanitation infrastructure in two long-established localities in Delhi: Mangolpuri and Kusumpur Pahari. Mangolpuri is a resettlement colony in the northwest region of Delhi with an estimated population of more than 350,000. It is interspersed with eight JJCs clusters of varying sizes. Kusumpur Pahari is located in the heart of south Delhi, near Jawaharlal Nehru University, and now has five blocks of JJCs and an estimated population of nearly 50,000.
- Topic:
- Development, Gender Issues, Health, Children, Women, Income Inequality, and Sanitation
- Political Geography:
- South Asia, India, and Asia
15. What Post-WWII Schoolchildren Learned about the World
- Author:
- Susan Douglass
- Publication Date:
- 09-2017
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
- Abstract:
- A look at the role of textbooks in shaping worldviews, global literacy, and national pride. The middle of the twentieth century was a watershed period in history for many reasons, with one of the most significant being the rise of mass education systems across the world. As Britain shed its colonies, newly independent countries with influential leaders launched efforts to educate their masses—efforts that had been held back under colonial rule. India and Egypt, under Nehru and Abdel Nasser respectively, began using government schools to strive for social integration and mold their citizens’ worldviews to enlist them in national economic development and modernization. Britain, too, launched a much-needed expansion of its secondary education system and revamped its elementary schools to meet the demands of the postwar baby boom.
- Topic:
- Education, Nationalism, History, and Children
- Political Geography:
- Britain, Europe, South Asia, Middle East, India, and Egypt
16. Media Representation of Women, Children and Minority Rights: Pakistani Public Response
- Author:
- Noshina Saleem, Mian Ahmad Hanan, and Arooj Arshad
- Publication Date:
- 01-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Political Studies
- Institution:
- Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
- Abstract:
- This paper focuses on the media impact on the discourse of women, children and minority rights within the context of Pakistan while also studying the difference in response generated by Males and females consumers with a sample of 455 adults taken from different private and public institutes of Pakistan. Correlational research design was employed for this research and data was collected through indigenous questionnaire. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to find out the relationship between the study variables. Moreover, Multiple Hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to study whether the promotion of women, children and minority rights was predicted by Media. Also moderating effect of gender was studied by conducted a SEM using path analysis through AMOS. The findings of the study revealed that awareness about women, children and minority rights was significantly predicted by mass media, controlling for the effects of demographic variables. Moreover, the results of the moderation analysis revealed the significant interaction effect of gender and media with minority. The findings highlighted that Pakistani media effectively performs its responsibilities by better providing factual information for citizens and empowerment for the disenfranchised among other roles. So, that the media consumers in Pakistan have to platforms that enable various segments of society to voice their political concerns and demands.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, Mass Media, Public Opinion, Minorities, Children, and Women
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan and South Asia
17. Socio-economic and political determinants of child labor at brick kilns: A case study of district Jhang
- Author:
- Arfan Latif, Shoukat Ali, Abdullah Awan, and Jafar Riaz Kataria
- Publication Date:
- 01-2016
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- South Asian Studies
- Institution:
- Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
- Abstract:
- Child labor at brick kilns is an important aspect and dimension of child labor which is hampering the overall development of the country. There are different determinants of child labor however current study tries to explore the socio-economic and political determinants of child labor. The current study uses qualitative research design by using in-depth interviews to explore the above mentioned objective of the study. By using purposive sampling technique the researcher interviewed 30 respondents. The results of the study are based on themes that emerged during the data analysis. The study concluded that less education, need for extra money and lack for poor monitoring by government are important factors and reasons of child labor in Pakistan. The study implies that potential implementation of the government’s laws and proper monitoring is a key to eradicate child labor.
- Topic:
- Politics, Labor Issues, Children, and Child Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Pakistan, South Asia, and Punjab
18. Value Subtraction in Public Sector Production: Accounting vs Economic Cost of Primary Schooling in India
- Author:
- Lant Pritchett and Yamini Aiyar
- Publication Date:
- 06-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
- Abstract:
- We combine newly created data on per student government expenditure on children in government elementary schools across India, data on per student expenditure by households on students attending private elementary schools, and the ASER measure of learning achievement of students in rural areas. The combination of these three sources allows us to compare both the "accounting cost" difference of public and private schools and also the "economic cost"—what it would take public schools, at their existing efficacy in producing learning, to achieve the learning results of the private sector. We estimate that the "accounting cost" per student in a government school in the median state in 2011/12 was Rs. 14,615 while the median child in private school cost Rs. 5,961. Hence in the typical Indian state, educating a student in government school costs more than twice as much than in private school, a gap of Rs. 7,906. Just these accounting cost gaps aggregated state by state suggests an annual excess of public over private cost of children enrolled in government schools of Rs. 50,000 crores (one crore=10 million) or 0.6 percent of GDP. But even that staggering estimate does not account for the observed learning differentials between public and private. We produce a measure of inefficiency that combines both the excess accounting cost and a money metric estimate of the cost of the inefficacy of lower learning achievement. This measure is the cost at which government schools would be predicted to reach the learning levels of the private sector. Combining the calculations of accounting cost differentials plus the cost of reaching the higher levels of learning observed in the private sector state by state (as both accounting cost differences and learning differences vary widely across states) implies that the excess cost of achieving the existing private learning levels at public sector costs is Rs. 232,000 crores (2.78% of GDP, or nearly US$50 billion). It might seem counterintuitive that the total loss to inefficiency is larger than the actual budget, but that is because the actual budget produces such low levels of learning at such high cost that when the loss from both higher expenditures and lower outputs are measured it exceeds expenditures.
- Topic:
- Economics, Education, Government, Children, and Youth
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
19. Why Are Indian Children So Short?
- Author:
- Seema Jayachandran and Rohini Pande
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
- Abstract:
- India's child stunting rate is among the highest in the world, exceeding that of many poorer African countries. In this paper, we analyze data for over 174,000 Indian and Sub-Saharan African children to show that Indian firstborns are taller than African firstborns; the Indian height disadvantage emerges with the second child and then increases with birth order. This pattern persists when we compare height between siblings, and also holds for health inputs such as vaccinations. Three patterns in the data indicate that India's culture of eldest son preference plays a key role in explaining the steeper birth order gradient among Indian children and, consequently, the overall height deficit. First, the Indian firstborn height advantage only exists for sons. Second, an Indian son with an older sibling is taller than his African counterpart if and only if he is the eldest son. Third, the India-Africa height deficit is largest for daughters with no older brothers, which reflects that fact that their families are those most likely to exceed their desired fertility in order to have a son.
- Topic:
- Health, Poverty, Children, and International Development
- Political Geography:
- Africa, South Asia, and India