xii Special Focus: Children and Governance Guest Editor: Sheridan Bartlett cartoon by Stu Hutchinson Children, Youth and Environments 15(2), 2005 Good Governance: Making Age a Part of the EquationAn Introduction Sheridan Bartlett Children’s Environments Research Group The Graduate Center, City University of New York Citation: Bartlett, Sheridan. (2005). “Good Governance: Making Age Part of the Equation- An Introduction.” Children, Youth and Environments 15(2): 1-17. Comment on This Article© 2005 Children, Youth and Environments There has been a fair amount of confusion about the focus of this issue of CYE— both about the concept of “governance” (“Why don’t you just say ‘government’?”), and about how we are relating it to children (“Why are you having two issues on participation in one year?”).1 Some explanation is in order here. The words “governance” and “good governance” appear frequently these days in the discourse of aid agencies, civil society groups and governments at all levels. In the development world, the term does refer to the activities of government, but it is understood to go beyond government and to include the relationships between formal government institutions and an active civil society. “Rather than government taking decisions in isolation,” explains Diana Mitlin, “there is a growing acceptance (indeed expectation) of an engaged state negotiating its policies and practices with those who are a party to, or otherwise affected by, its decisions” (Mitlin 2004). In this issue of CYE there is a particular focus on this engagement at the local municipal level. Now for the children. Many of the papers in this issue do consider the participation of young people in local governance processes, but this is far from being the whole story. The real concern is this: a lot of the work of local government and its civil society partners is carried on without an explicit recognition of children and youth (think about transportation planning, sanitation, zoning regulations, for instance.). Policy making, planning and resource allocation are often viewed as benefiting some “universal” citizen, without regard to age or gender. A municipal official in the Good Governance: Making Age a Part of the Equation-An Introduction 2 Philippines, quoted in one of the papers in this issue (Aguirre), put it very clearly: “We don’t differentiate the concerns of children and youth from those of adults. We see the project as a whole and cannot target particular groups of people.” We know from experience, however, that the actions of local government and its partners are not neutral, and that this hypothetical universal citizen may share few of the needs of a 2-year-old boy or a 15-year-old girl. The participation of young people is only one approach to addressing this problem and there are many other steps that need to be taken. One of the hallmarks of “good governance” is its inclusiveness and attention to equity and participation for all groups. But even progressive governments that refer carefully in their policies to “women and men,” may express an unwitting bias against children. This is not unique to government. This bias can run deep in many quarters. Even in discussions among committed development professionals who are fully aware of the benefits of taking gender into account, it is not uncommon for interest to fade if the topic of children comes up. The unspoken message is that bringing children into the discussion is a not-quite-relevant tangent—that surely their needs are met if their parents’ needs are met. To some degree, this is true. But it is also true that boys and girls of different ages experience the world in particular ways, and may be affected in particular ways (sometimes profound and long-lasting) by a range of decisions and actions. This issue of CYE includes papers that focus on the attention, or lack of it, brought to children and young people in the course of various routine activities of local government and its partners—from the provision of basic infrastructure and services, to the administration of the justice system and local planning processes. We specifically encouraged the submission of work that had followed initiatives over time in order to allow for the learning that this permits...