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Originally published at Lemmingworks. You can comment here or there.
JuliaD sent me this World development report 2007 : development and the next generation, Vol. 1 of 1 and told me to look at Chapter 8, page 188, and this is what I found. It is very interesting to see what the world bank has to say about ICTs, and you can see what this has to day about the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project: local language content, access to information, skills building, child safety, etc… It is harder to become a victim of human trafficking if are not ignorant and isolated. Yes, food and basic healthcare, but why stop there.
Young people today live in a world integrated by faster movements across borders—movements of goods, capital, information, technology, ideas, and people. This chapter focuses on the two international movements in which youth play the most major roles: international migration and the spread of information and ideas through information and communication technologies (ICTs). Youth involvement in these two global movements can enhance growth and alleviate poverty. It can also broaden their opportunities, enhance their capabilities, and give them second chances when things go wrong in their many transitions.
Young people’s opportunities widen when they can migrate to work abroad or use today’s technologies to acquire new skills and get better jobs at home. More developing-country students are studying overseas and at home through online education programs. New interactive technologies are providing unprecedented amounts of information to youth, allowing them to become more informed decision makers and to communicate more with youth in other countries.
One problem is that young people in many developing countries have few legal options to migrate, leading to illegal migration and trafficking. A second is that the rapid expansion in mobile phone and ICT use has yet to reach many young workers. The challenge for policy is to extend the benefits of migration and ICTs to more developing country youth—and to enhance their development impact while mitigating the new risks.
Receiving countries can do more for poverty reduction and development by providing more opportunities for less-skilled young migrants—through seasonal and temporary worker programs and by letting the youth who do migrate use and build their human capital. Sending countries can also do more to increase the development impact of youth migration. The benefits from existing young migrants can be increased—by lowering the costs of sending remittances and facilitating return migration. They can also expand the opportunities for other youth to migrate by avoiding hefty passport costs and restrictive legal conditions on emigration—and setting up more agreements for labor migration. And they can mitigate trafficking and illegality by providing more information on the risks of moving and living abroad and by implementing policies that foster more domestic opportunities for work.
A youth lens on ICTs suggests that governments need to pay more attention to particular types of regulations, in addition to their broad regulatory and competition policies. Communal access to new ICTs is more important for younger individuals than older, so regulations that allow easy entry for prepaid phone card operators, Internet cafés, and village phones can have large payoffs for youth. Policy makers should do more to use ICTs to communicate and interact with youth on government policy and to promote local language content. Policy makers also need to experiment with helping the first generation of youth using these new technologies to do so in a responsible and safe way, mitigating the risks of child pornography, cyber bullying, and other such dangers.
temporary worker programs and by letting the youth who do migrate use and build their human capital. Sending countries can also do more to increase the development impact of youth migration. The benefits from existing young migrants can be increased—by lowering the costs of sending remittances and facilitating return migration. They can also expand the opportunities for other youth to migrate by avoiding hefty passport costs and restrictive legal conditions on emigration—and setting up more agreements for labor migration. And they can mitigate trafficking and illegality by providing more information on the risks of moving and living abroad and by implementing policies that foster more domestic opportunities for work.
A youth lens on ICTs suggests that governments need to pay more attention to particular types of regulations, in addition to their broad regulatory and competition policies. Communal access to new ICTs is more important for younger individuals than older, so regulations that allow easy entry for prepaid phone card operators, Internet cafés, and village phones can have large payoffs for youth. Policy makers should do more to use ICTs to communicate and interact with youth on government policy and to promote local language content. Policy makers also need to experiment with helping the fi rst generation of youth using these new technologies to do so in a responsible and safe way, mitigating the risks of child pornography, cyber bullying, and other such dangers.
