Lost Innocence, Stolen Childhoods

Lost Innocence, Stolen Childhoods examines the lives of Bangladeshi children and adolescents aged roughly 8 to 16, revealing stark gaps in the rights they can actually exercise. A middle-class child and the young domestic servant in the same home may be the same age, yet their roles, rights, and obligations are profoundly different: the servant is kept out of school, trained for domestic tasks, and taught to accept a low position, while the other is pressured to achieve school success and confirm their higher rank. A key idea in Bengali child development is the cultivation of understanding, but what must be understood, when, and how varies widely by circumstance. These distinct notions of childhood are critical to building a society marked by deep class and gender inequality, where children of similar age share little in common. Following Bangladesh's ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in August 1990, the book questions the government's role in setting norms and standards for children's rights, from universal primary education to child labour laws and preventing child prostitution. Although some good laws exist, the state apparatus proves largely inefficient in enforcing them, and most disturbingly, the study finds corrupt practices where state agents use protective laws to extract payoffs from violators rather than protect children. The price children pay is described in at least two settings: brothels and bidi factories.