Globally we have departed from the sacred trust. Many of today’s children exist as invisible, undefended, and unprotected members of society, in essence, vulnerable, (Human Rights Watch 1999). For millions of children, the main cause of their vulnerability is due to violations to their human rights. These violations are encapsulated in issues of (1) invisibility due to family secrecy and abuse, mobility within and across national and international borders, poor government oversight, etc; (2) protections that are either poor or nonexistent, families weakened by war, disease and poverty, inadequate or absent laws, policies, supports, or interventions UNICEF, 2005a; (3) and “undefendedness”, the inability or lack of will by adults, communities, or governments to be the advocates ensuring basic needs and the betterment of children’s lives. The incidences of threats trauma and exploitation are numerous, indeed, what does it mean to be a vulnerable child today?

Threats to child security come in many forms, among the most devastating are war and disease that leave children without parents for long periods of time or permanently. Children are losing their parents in record numbers; 132 million children are orphaned in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean (UNICEF, 2005a, 2005b, 2012). Unaccompanied minors and orphans defined as having lost one or both parents are highly vulnerable to abuses by family and strangers UNICEF 2006d. One surviving parent or grandparents may not be adequate to guarantee the child’s right to protection. Among orphaned youth, are refugee children and youth, numbering as many as 15 million (UNICEF, 2012). Refugee children are crossing national and international borders to flee prosecution, seek asylum, and end long-term displacement. The experience of parental loss (Luster, Qin, Bates, Johnson, & Rana, 2009) reverberates throughout life, and among the challenges facing young survivors is the unexpected need to take on adult responsibilities.

Exploitation and stigma add to the burden of orphaned children and children in fosterage. The vulnerability that arises from health related stigma, like HIV/AIDS, can cause them to disappear from view of other living relatives and their communities. The risk is compounded when feelings of shame and parental loss are used to recruit them as child soldiers (HRW, 1994a). The exploitation is complete when the child soldier is then exposed to torture and maltreatment during training to force his compliance (HRW, 1992; Wessells, 2010).

Child laborers in industry or on farms are also invisible and extremely difficult to defend. It is estimated by the International Labor Organization (ILO) (IPEC, 2011) that 215 million of the world’s children are caught up in labor of various kinds. In 2012, 115 million children were engaged in what has been reported as some of the worst forms of child labor (Agbényiga, 2006; IPEC, 2011; UNICEF, 2012), including thousands of child slaves (Lee-Wright, 1990; Seabrook, 2001). Undefended children are recruited by adults because they are cheap, often submissive, and more easily trained than adults. Children not paid for their labor are also the unseen victims of some of the most hazardous forms of labor (IPEC, 2011).

Another 100 million children are engaged in work for pay in support of families or other child relatives (HRW, 2000; UNICEF, 2012). Children work because they may be the sole source of support to themselves or their families. Critical distinctions are made among harsh, unsafe, involuntary practices, that create vulnerability, and safer family, community-based, graduated apprenticeship approaches, mutually valued by the child and the family (Agbényiga, 2006, 2011). Irrespective of the distinctions among the contexts of children’s labor, millions of children continue to be engaged in these activities at early ages. Even these safe forms of work can be disruptive to educational attainment for boys and especially for girls.

While child labor can be a short-term fix to the immediate needs of the child and the family, education is an important pathway to escaping the long term constraints of poverty, race, and gender. These opportunities for children’s futures and their development are not well protected. Yet, 115 million children are not in school, and two thirds of them are girls (IPEC, 2011; World Bank, 2011). The supports that children need to ensure educational opportunity involve multiple challenges. Education is disrupted when the care of parents, perhaps ill from HIV/AIDS, falls to young girls (HRW, 2000; UNICEF, 2006c) as with other household duties. Given current trends like these, even with extensive efforts in expanding education and training, by 2015, there will still be more than 70 million children who are not attending school, most of them in Africa. Children encounter many obstacles that interfere with their educational attainment or effective schooling experiences; labor and gender are among the most common, but there are others. Ethnic and racial discrimination accounts for a number of systemic interactions between families, communities, and schools, leading to overt exclusion from school, significant deterrents to attendance, and early exit. A UNICEF report (2008) found that disproportionately, 101 million children currently out of school were ethnic minority or indigenous children. So one consequence of discrimination is limited or complete lack of access to school.

Even when children attend school, they may be plagued with cultural, religious, or racial discrimination that disrupt attendance and threaten their educational attainment and economic empowerment through adulthood (UNICEF, 2005a, 2006a). Discriminatory treatment in school can push children and youth out of school before they complete their educational goals. Educational inequality of schools globally may exist not only as poor quality education and resources but more insidiously as cultural domination in schools and school systems. In this process the identities and cultures of children are subjugated to a singular set of ethnocentric values reinforced by policy, curriculum, and transactions with school personnel (Biesele & Hitchcock, 2000). Under these circumstances, the child’s right to agency (Nsamenang, 2012), cultural identity, and self-determination are undermined and sometimes arrested. This oppression drives the child toward further invisibility increasing educational exclusion while blocking access to social and economic success (UNICEF, 2005a).

Children’s vulnerabilities are interwoven by the commons threads of oppression, poverty, lack of cultural security, family stability, child labor, and the many faces of discrimination. Undefended status, not only limits educational opportunities and quality of life but threatens physical and mental health both in childhood and later in adulthood. Long-term psychological trauma is a problem for children who experience war, those with backgrounds as child soldiers, and those who have been denied their religious or cultural freedoms (HRW, 1994b, 1996; UNICEF, 2006d). Reintegration into society or into healthier families occurs eventually after demobilization but is then fraught with emotional and psychological difficulty as are other forms of reentry (HRW, 1992, 1994b, 1994c, 1996; UNICEF, 2006b). For example, Sudanese refugee youth entering the USA and living with American foster families suffer ongoing effects of PTSD (e.g., sleep disturbance, depression, alcoholism) (Bates et al., 2005; Luster, Johnson, & Bates, 2008) but are also resilient (e.g., completion of high school and college, maintenance of job and family, development of bridging organizations for Sudan) (Luster, Johnson, et al., 2008). Their resilience is bolstered by a range of supports, including family, and institutional services. Their example show us how the course of children’s lives can be changed, perhaps even saved through mental health and other support services. However, globally, mental health services are highly underdeveloped for children (Saxena, 2005).

Considerations of perspective and voice are central when addressing themes in global context. Indigenous voices and cultural variation must not be ignored in our discourse and assessment of common problems, and problems across contexts. Nuances associated with cultural perspective, practice, or social history should not lose our attention in the discussion and development of strategies or policies (Johnson, 2000; Johnson, Dyanda-Marira, & Dzvimbo, 1997). These issues are especially important when applied to the often eclipsed voices of children.