Children are an important stakeholder group; they constitute 34% of the world's citizens and their actions will determine our collective future. Th e UNCRC created consensus that children's views must be taken seriously. Yet their opinions have failed to inform the allocation of resources used in their name. Th eir views are rarely sought during scrutiny of government despite their valuable insights on the functioning of public institutions. Th is paper summarises the debates around children's participation and argues that there has been little dialogue across the academic fi elds. Th e long history of children's participation in the South is only starting to inform the new wave of attention to children as active citizens in the North. Th e paper poses questions as a catalyst for further debate: Why do theoretical frameworks fail children? What is the impact of the process of 'participation'? Are children who lack the networks and social capital being excluded?

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Current economic and political trends present particular challenges for countries dealing with the development of industry without the social infrastructure needed to uphold citizens' rights. As free trade demands competitiveness in global markets, so the demand for cheap labor rises. This has specific implications for children. This article argues that despite new legislation to fulfil the requirements of international mandates (such as the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and International Labor Organization Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor), rights-based programming does not sufficiently incorporate the perspectives of poor children and their family members. This article draws on recent ethnographic research that pioneered a collaborative model in which government, voluntary, private, and trade union organizations conducted research to compare the impact of current approaches to child labor on the livelihoods of working children. It shows that in failing to incorporate sociocultural understanding in program planning, services fail to maximize their potential in offering children opportunities to end the cycle of poverty.

Women's, Children's, and adolesCents' health 42 BmJ 351:suppl1 | the bmj Human rights in the new Global Strategy By recognising the centrality of human rights, the revised Global Strategy encourages some bold shifts in improving the health and wellbeing of women, children, and adolescents, say Jyoti Sanghera and colleagues expressed in this article, which does not necessarily represent the views, decisions, or policies of WHO or the institutions with which the authors are affiliated. Jyoti Sanghera chief 1 Lynn Gentile human rights officer 1 Alfonso Barragues technical adviser on human rights 3 Imma Guerras-Delgado child rights adviser 1 Lucinda O'Hanlon women's rights adviser 2 Rachel Louise Hinton technical officer 4 Kumanan Rasanathan senior health specialist 6 Marcus Stahlhofer adviser, child and adolescent rights 7 Rajat Khosla human rights adviser 5

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