Prevalence,
Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the first decade of the 21st Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/CzechRepublic.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the
situation in the HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking for
material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this
page and others to see which aspect(s) of street life are of particular
interest to you. You might be
interested in exploring how children got there, how they survive, and how
some manage to leave the street.
Perhaps your paper could focus on how some street children abuse the
public and how they are abused by the public … and how they abuse each
other. Would you like to write about
market children? homeless children? Sexual and labor exploitation? begging? violence? addiction? hunger? neglect? etc. There is a lot to the subject of Street
Children. Scan other countries as well
as this one. Draw comparisons between
activity in adjacent countries and/or regions. Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. Teachers Check out some of
the Resources
for Teachers attached to this website. ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Large numbers of
street children discovered in Chechnya Ruslan Isayev,
www.watchdog.cz/?show=000000-000002-000001-000186&lang=1 [accessed 6 May
2011] The “difficult”
children, as they are called by the staff of the republic’s juvenile
rehabilitation inspectorates, are now approaching their favourite
time of year, when it becomes possible for them to sleep out in the open.
With the arrival of spring, their numbers usually increase. The lives of such
children have a rather narrow focus, which is centred mostly on begging, stealing, or at best a job at
a gas station. Many of them start smoking or experimenting with alcohol at
any early age. The most common activity is glue-sniffing. Before the war,
foreign cameramen could literally “smell out” the places where such children
were hiding, and the estranged faces of young drug addicts often appeared in
the world's television news. Rustam was only 10 when
the second war began. His was the usual fate of the neglected child : divorced parents, a bad stepmother, a drunken
father. Now he is almost 17. He has a job as an ancillary worker on a
construction site, and earns around 300 roubles
(about $12) a day. He is going to get married. He likes to remember the time
when he was homeless. “They were the freest years of my life,” he jokes. ***
ARCHIVES *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61644.htm [accessed 7 February
2020] CHILDREN
- The government
is committed to children's rights and welfare. The government provides free
and compulsory education through age 15. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF)
reported a primary school enrollment rate of 90 percent from 2000 to 2004.
Most children continued through secondary school. There were no statistics
available on Romani attendance rates. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 31 January 2003 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/czechrepublic2003.html [accessed 31 January
2011] [63] The Committee
is concerned that there is a growing number of children living on the street
in urban areas vulnerable to, inter alia, sexual abuse, violence, including
from the police, exploitation, lack of access to
education, substance abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS and
malnutrition. Furthermore, the Committee notes that the primary response to
the situation of these children, as described by the State party in its
report, is institutionalization. Up
To Ten Thousand Czech Children Go Missing Every Year Dita Asiedu,
Radio [accessed 6 May
2011] Although most missing children are found, Mrs Baudysova points to the
disturbing fact that in the short time they spend out on the streets, they
are at a very high risk of being abused:
With time the great majority of the missing children in the Czech
Republic do turn up, and statistics include only those cases reported to the
police. The number of children who are
abducted is unknown but is believed to make up only a fraction of the total
number of those who go missing, most of whom are runaways. Ashoka Fellows -
Michaela Wicki This profile was
prepared when Michaela Svobodova was elected to the
Ashoka Fellowship in 1997 www.ashoka.org/node/2935 [accessed 8 Aug 2013] In order to improve
the quality of life of runaways, Michaela has started a series of related
programs that are designed to meet the varied and complex needs of these
troubled young people as they move from homeless runaways to productive adult
member of society. Facts - An
International Perspective Re-Solv, the
national charity solely dedicated to the prevention of solvent and volatile
substance abuse (VSA) www.re-solv.org/international.asp [accessed 6 May
2011] [scroll down to Czech Republic,
Reports to Treaty Bodies Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination, August 2003 At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 6 May
2011] The following
points were noted with concern: the growing
number of street children, noting their vulnerability to, among other things,
sexual abuse, violence (including from the police), exploitation, substance
abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS and malnutrition; the rise of
delinquency and crimes committed by children; discriminatory behavior on the
part of some persons working with and for children, including teachers and
doctors. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this webpage as: Patt,
Prof. Martin, "Street Children – |
