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Street
Children The Prevalence, Abuse
& Exploitation of Street Children Resources
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Background
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CAUTION: There
is always a risk in posting links to external websites. Some of the following links may possibly
lead to websites that present information that is unsubstantiated, misleading
or even false. Their authenticity has
not been verified and their content has not been validated. A Video
Playlist from a Global perspective There are an increasing number of street
children videos now available that constitute a supplementary source of
information for researchers, especially for those who may not have
experienced the reality of street children.
[Playlists developed by Brian Horne of almudo.com & streetkidnews.blogsome.com] And
Now My Soul Is Hardened - Abandoned Children in Soviet Russia, 1918-1930 PREFACE - No spectacle in Soviet cities
more troubled Russian and foreign observers during the first
postrevolutionary decade than the millions of orphaned and abandoned children
known as besprizornye. Whether
portrayed as pitiable victims of war and famine or as devious wolf-children
preying on the surrounding population to support cocaine and gambling habits,
they haunted the works of journalists, travelers, and Party members alike.
“Every visitor sees it first,” noted an American correspondent, “and is so
shocked by the sight that the most widely known Russian youth are
the…homeless children flapping along the main streets of cities and the main
routes of travel like ragged flocks of animated scarecrows.” Brian Horne of almudo.com suggests
this book because so much of what we have on street children is very recent
in historical terms and this book gives a fascinating account of Russian
street children of seventy or eighty years ago. XVII. The
Street Arab [Jacob A. Riis (1849–1914),
"How the Other Half Lives", 1890] The Street Arab has all the faults
and all the virtues of the lawless life he leads. Vagabond that he is,
acknowledging no authority and owing no allegiance to anybody or anything,
with his grimy fist raised against society whenever it tries to coerce him,
he is as bright and sharp as the weasel, which, among all the predatory
beasts, he most resembles. His sturdy independence, love of freedom and
absolute self-reliance, together with his rude sense of justice that enables
him to govern his little community, not always in accordance with municipal
law or city ordinances, but often a good deal closer to the saving line of
“doing to others as one would be done by”. Brian Horne of almudo.com also
recommends this book to us, commenting that “aside from its period style,
[it] reads like something that could have been written yesterday”. What does it mean to be a
street kid? Imagine you are eight years old.
Maybe your parents beat you, and you ran away. Maybe they didn't have the
money to support you, or maybe it just seemed that way, so you decided to
leave home so there would be more food for your little sister. If you live in
Colombia, Peru, or southern Mexico, maybe the army or the guerrillas killed
your parents, and you could never find the aunt they had always told you
lived in the city. In the end, you are eight years old. The reason doesn't
matter. What matters is that you are alone. Neglecting
a massive problem: drug abuse among street children Very little data is available on
street children living with HIV/AIDS in South Asia. The latest HIV/AIDS
estimates prepared by Unicef indicate that in 2005 there were 36,000 new
infections among the children in South Asia less than 14 years old. Street children are vulnerable to HIV and
other sexually transmitted infections primarily due to sexual contacts with
multiple partners, forced sex, drug abuse, related risky behaviour and
injecting drug use. Intravenous drug
users (IDUs) are at risk of contracting HIV and can pass it on to their
sexual partners. Drug users are also more likely to engage in risky sexual
behaviour. Street children spend a lot
of time in settings where casual sexual encounters occur. They run more risk
of being infected because they often have sex with persons who practice risky
behaviour themselves, like having multiple sexual partners or sharing
injecting equipment. Any intervention
by anybody trying to help street children is a challenge. 100-150 Million Children
Live Or Work On The Streets Of The Developing World Street children
live in abandoned buildings, back alleys, parks, garbage dumps, cemeteries,
and other public places. During the
day, they will tend to congregate in places with significant pedestrian
traffic, such as street corners, markets, bus terminals, and ferry
buildings. When they are young, street
children are often able to survive by begging or selling trinkets. As they grow older, however, people tend to
have less compassion on them, and they will typically resort to petty theft
and prostitution to survive. How Do
Kids End Up On The Street? Some
children end up on the street because they have been orphaned or abandoned by
their parents. The HIV/AIDS crisis means that there are increasing numbers of
orphaned children who have nobody to look after them. Others have left their families because of
poverty to look for work in the city. Others are escaping family violence or
breakdown, which may spring from the stresses of poverty leading to
alcoholism or abuse. Backward and
forward linkages that strengthen primary education IV CHILDREN, WORK AND EDUCATION - Primary education in India is
not compulsory; nor is child labour illegal. The result is that a large
proportion of our children between ages six and 14 are not in school. They
stay at home to care for younger siblings, tend cattle, collect firewood, and
work in the fields. They find employment in cottage industries, tea-stalls,
restaurants, or as domestics in middle class homes. They become prostitutes
or live as street children, begging or picking rags and bottles from trash
for resale. Many are bonded labourers, tending cattle and working as
agricultural labourers for local landowners.’3 There is, formally, a widespread
consensus about ending child labour and establishing compulsory universal
primary education for all children up to the age of 14, a commitment that can
be traced back to Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s efforts at the turn of the last
century. Yet, numerous commissions, reports, plans and experiments
notwithstanding, more than five decades after independence, the situation
remains dismal. Not only do many children never enter school, there are many
of those who do drop out before completing basic education. And scores of
children from the most deprived strata are or become part of the workforce. Preamble
To The Problematic Of Street Children Children can be seen everywhere,
at all times. Thus, we tend somewhat
hastily to apply the label of "street children" to these children
that invade the streets. Not all of them should be
considered as street children.
Although most of these children go back home at night, some of them do
not have any contact with their family, with the adults. They are the real street children. The
Children On Our Streets - Part I: The Problem For the children and their
families, being on the street is not a problem. It is their solution to a
number of problems. The
Children On Our Streets - Part II The Situation When we try to understand the
problems faced by street children, we quickly find that we need to know
something about the home background of the children. We need to look at their families and what
they are leaving in order to be on the streets. Street
Children, Human Rights, And Public Health: A Critique And Future Directions
[PDF] INTRODUCTION: A SHIFT OF
PERSPECTIVE - What
has been called the global or "worldwide phenomenon of street
children" (le Roux
1996) has neither vanished from sight nor effectively been solved.
However, current perspectives tend not to demarcate street children so
radically from other poor children in urban centers or to conceptualize the
homeless in isolation from other groups of children facing adversity. Welfare
agencies now talk of "urban children at risk" (Kapadia 1997), which
conceptualizes street children as one of a number of groups most at risk and
requiring urgent attention. Street children are especially
easy targets. They may be beaten by police who extort money from them
or forced to provide sex to avoid arrest or be released from police
custody. Seen as vagrants or criminals, street children have been
tortured, mutilated, and subjected to death threats and extrajudicial
execution. The
Convention on the Rights of the Child - Full
text of the Convention Note:
The Convention on the Rights of the Child was adopted and opened for
signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/25
of 20 November 1989. It entered into force 2 September 1990, in accordance
with article 49 Children's
rights to life; to be free from discrimination; to be free from military
recruitment and to be protected in armed conflicts; to be protected from
torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; to be free
from arbitrary deprivation of liberty; to special treatment within the
justice system; and the rights to education, health care, an adequate
standard of living, and freedom from economic exploitation and other abuse Human Rights, Legal
Issues & Law Enforcement One of
the principle barriers standing in the way of street children accessing their
right under the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child to
medical care is the fact that many of them lack the correct documentation Children
for whom the street more than their family has become their real home Street children throughout the world are subjected to physical
abuse by police or have been murdered outright, as governments treat them as
a blight to be eradicated-rather than as children to be nurtured and
protected Severe
Chill by Niraj Poudyal As winter deepens in the valley,
street children find their daily life deteriorating Countering a
Culture of Death, by Michael Johnstone How do they eat? Why, they pilfer,
they shoplift. They become muggers. These are no angels these boys. They are
filthy dirty. They are foul mouthed. They are aggressive, with one another no
less than with those they meet. They smell. They are not popular. City
worthies want to get rid of them. There are campaigns to 'street cleanse'
them. They are the victims of violence. They disappear. Hooligans shoot them Médecins Du Monde
Sweden Assessment Mission To St Petersburg St. Petersburg has approximately 5
million registered citizens within the municipal boundaries. There are an estimated
5000 to 7000 street children in St. Petersburg, with a greater number
sleeping at home most of the nights but avoiding school and living on the
street during the day. Street children
are constituted in groups of between 10 and 40. They congregate in places
known as "tousovkas" . The tousovka is often situated at metro and
railway stations. These places provide shelter and warmth in the evenings in
a city where the temperature often drops to -25 degrees during winter Street Children "Our
Lives Our Words" Ricardo’s scarred hands are always
busy – wiping the faces of smaller children, opening doors for others,
picking up dropped items and returning them. He is desperately trying to give
to others that which he has never had on Montevideo’s unwelcoming streets –
comfort, pleasure and the security of knowing that there is a helping hand
when you need one. Changing
Paradigms for Working with Street Youth [PDF] by Stephanie
Sauvé ABSTRACT - The United Nations estimates
100 million street youth across the globe. They are products of poverty, war,
urbanization, political instability, family breakdown, and HIV/AIDS, among
others. Many are not homeless, but primary income earners for their extended
families. Many participate in the sex
and drug trade because of limited income generation alternatives. How can we
support these youth and increase their opportunities while respecting them as
independent actors in their own lives?
Street Kids International suggests a critical paradigm shift as the
basis for being responsive and effective and describes its approaches for
working with street youth as participants and assets within their present
communities Promises Broken
– An Assessment of Children’s Rights Attention to street children has
focused largely on their pressing economic and social plight – poverty, lack of
shelter, denial of education, AIDS, prostitution, and substance abuse. But
with the exception of killings of street children in Brazil and Colombia,
little attention has been paid to the constant police violence and abuse
inflicted on these children, or their treatment within the justice system
through which they regularly pass In the U.S., national statistics
report the
number of homeless kids at more than 1.5 million. More than 500 thousand are
still under the age of 15, and some are as young as nine An
Outside Chance: STREET CHILDREN AND JUVENILE JUSTICE- RECOMMENDATIONS Recommendations Taken From The
Book “An Outside Chance: Street Children And Juvenile Justice – An
International Perspective” By Marie Wernham, Consortium For Street Children,
May 2004. General recommendations
mainly to governments, but usually in partnership with the other actors in
the justice system, including police, social services, probation, lawyers,
judiciary, staff in institutions, community – including NGOs, media and academics. An Outside Chance: Street Children
and Juvenile Justice - An International Perspective by Marie Wernham - An
International Perspective by Marie Wernham, Consortium For Street Children,
May 2004 Street Children -
Community Children Worldwide Resource Library The United Nations has been
attributed as estimating the population of street children worldwide at 150
million, with the number rising daily. These young people are more
appropriately known as community children, as they are the offspring of our
communal world. Ranging in age from three to eighteen, about 40 percent of those
are homeless--as a percentage of world population, unprecedented in the
history of civilization The child sex trade, like all
trades, exists not because there is poverty but because there is demand and
supply Forced
Labor: The Prostitution of Children (Symposium Proceedings) Many of
the girls who end up as child prostitutes in Latin American countries have chosen a
sexually exploitative life on the streets, rather than suffer continued
family violence and male incest in their own homes. In 2003, an estimated 500,000
children under eighteen years of age served in the government armed forces, paramilitary
forces, civil militia, and armed groups of more than eighty-five nations, and
another 300,000 children were active in armed combat in more than thirty
countries. Some of the children were as young as seven years of age Shargh daily, May 26 – A group of
Iranian boys and girls will be sold in an auction today in Fojeyreh, United
Arab Emirates ANGOLA:
Children victims of witchcraft accusations In some areas of Angola the belief
in witchcraft is strong, and an accusation of sorcery can lead to violent and
sometimes lethal retribution by the community. Street Children:
More and More Killed Everyday In 1994, 1221 minors were killed
in the State of Rio de Janeiro, an average of more then three kids everyday;
570 died from gunshot wounds, and a total of 344 were under the age of 11. Fiction also trivializes fact.
There is no romance in the life of street children, only pain and
hopelessness, hunger and fear, disease and death. Real street children do not
sport beguiling smiles. They are prone to misbehave. They often stink. All
could use a bath. But under the grime, the air of
defiance or the crushing indifference their feverish eyes convey, there is a
child, scared, vulnerable, far too young to taste life's bitter medicine, yet
incurably old before his time. In the ghostly twilight world of
street children, there are no magic lamps to rub, no benevolent, turbaned
genies, no flying carpets, no protective amulets, no healing philters; only
evil spirits lurking, stalking easy prey. Unlike Aladdin, street children do
not amass fame and fortune, and no fairy prince or princess will marry them
in the end. Most never leave the streets. Many don't reach adulthood. Disease,
hunger, drugs and bullets often cut their lives short. The film, Metamorphosis: The
Lives of Former Street Kids, has no distributor or broadcaster. Mervyn
created it for a few thousand bucks on credit card, with a volunteer sound
editor and cameraman Ben Hoskyn, a BCIT film grad. Too much research has
focused on why youth stay on the streets, she said. Her work looks at why
some youth successfully launch themselves off the streets. American
musician takes on the system "A lot of organisations aimed
at helping these kids simply come in and try and get them to conform without
first discovering what their needs are. But in order to really help them you
need to build a foundation first and not just go in and tell them what to do.
"People seem to either think
they are delinquents, or they pity them, thinking they must have come from an
abusive background. Yes, many of their previous circumstances may have been
tough, but what people don't realise is that the street life is addictive.
These kids have the freedom to move around as they please. Many of them will
choose to stay where they are, living by their own rules." And that, Brown says, is the
greatest problem. "The structure in this country is flawed. Children
here are making decisions for themselves they are too young to make." |