Human Trafficking in [Kenya] [other countries]Street Children in [Kenya Child Prostitution in [Kenya] [other countries] |
Prevalence, Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children The Republic of Kenya [map], located in E Africa, is bordered by Somalia (E), by the
Indian Ocean (SE), by Tanzania (S), by Lake Victoria (Victoria Nyanza) (SW),
by Uganda (W), by Sudan (NW), and by Ethiopia (N). |
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accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation
in Quick
Search for Missing Children - Select Gender,
Country ( UNICEF - The
Big Picture U.S. Dept
of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - There are large numbers of street children in Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 CHILDREN - Economic displacement and the
spread of HIV/AIDS continued to affect the problem of homeless street
children. In 2002 the East African Standard reported an estimated 250
thousand children living on the streets in urban areas (primarily The government provided programs
to place street children in shelters and assisted NGOs in providing
education, skills training, counseling, legal advice, and shelter for girls
abused by their employers. In 2003 the government provided an employment
program for orphans and abandoned youth that included training and subsidized
employment, but its effectiveness was limited. By November 231 of 300 street
children in the National Youth Service had graduated from vocational courses. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2001 [35] The Committee is concerned
about the incidence of police brutality, particularly against street
children, refugee children and those in conflict with the law. Concern is
also expressed at the inadequate enforcement of existing legislation to
ensure that all children are treated with respect for their physical and
mental integrity and their inherent dignity. [51] The Committee is concerned
about widespread poverty and the increasingly high numbers of children in the
State party who do not enjoy the right to an adequate standard of living,
including children belonging to poor families, AIDS orphans, street children,
internally displaced children, children of ethnic minorities and children living
in remote rural communities. [57] The Committee expresses grave
concern at the high and increasing numbers of street children. In particular,
the Committee notes their limited access to health, education and other
social services, as well as their vulnerability to police brutality, sexual
abuse and exploitation, economic exploitation and other forms of
exploitation. [59] The Committee notes with
appreciation that the State party has signed a memorandum of understanding
with ILO and that various ILO/International Program on the
Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) programs to prevent and combat child labor
are being carried out. The Committee also welcomes the establishment of a
National Steering Committee on child labor. Nevertheless, and in the light of
the current economic situation, the increasing number of school drop-outs and
the increasing number of street children, the Committee is concerned about
the large number of children engaged in labor and the lack of information and
adequate data on the situation of child labor and economic exploitation in
the State party. The Committee notes also with concern that notwithstanding
various legal provisions there is no firm minimum age for admission to
employment and that child labor is still prevalent in the State party. [61] The Committee notes that the
State party participated in the World Congress against Commercial Sexual
Exploitation, held in Kenya:
Street Children's Lobby Accuses Police Police were on Thursday accused of
failing to take action on those who sell glue to street children. fficials
of Ex-Street Children Community Based Organisation
Joshua Lubale (chairman), Benson Juma Akumu (organising
secretary) and Peter Njenga (secretary) said
sniffing of glue by street children was widespread in Eldoret.
The organisation was founded by former street boys
in the town. The officials said in Eldoret that it was easy to pick out the shops and
individuals who sold glue to the children. Most of the children, they said,
were willing to reveal their source of the substance. Kenya:
Ease Children's Suffering Many genuine individuals and organisations are doing a good job looking after orphans
and other needy children. However, in
recent years, there has been an increase in the number of bogus groups or
individuals supposedly moved by the plight of street children, but whose real
motivation is to use this as a means to enrich themselves. Step up
sensitization on the plight of street children, urges VP Mr. Awori
said Kenya is estimated to host more than 300,000 children and youth on the
streets who engage in survival tactics that endanger their well being and
that of the society. "Most of
them are abused, neglected, exposed to criminal and gang activities, suffer
poor health due to their lifestyles and exposure to harsh environment, drug
and substance abuse, and exposure to HIV/AIDS infection", he
lamented. He said the large numbers of
children who live and work in the streets is a reflection of some of the most
intractable development challenges of the society, which he attributed to
lack of proper education and family guidance in upbringing. Kenya:
Former Street Children Out to Change Life in the City Slums Mr Nduati,
a soft-spoken 26-year-old, left an abusive home when he was 14 and entered
life in the streets. "I started hustling," he remembers;
"stealing when I could, doing odd jobs for a few days at a time. I was
taking drugs everyday, whatever I could lay my hands on - brown sugar,
marijuana, alcohol, glue - I went crazy for years." ARTICULATE FOUNDER - It's difficult to equate this
story with the articulate founder of Emmanuel Boyz
Centre standing before me now. But it is precisely his experience of life in
the streets that gave Mr Nduati
the drive and compassion to start up Emmanuel in 2000. The youth centre has
so far taken 300 children off the streets, providing them with shelter, food
and a productive environment in which to focus on self-development rather
than merely surviving. Eleven-year-old Joshua Mwithia wobbles and almost trips as he heaves under a
heavy load on his back. This is his fifth trip to Mutuati
shopping centre, one of the drop-off points of miraa
(khat) in Meru
North. Mwathi
is tired and emaciated but he has to toil on because he has a family to feed.
His 14-hour daily job involves harvesting and ferrying miraa
from various farms. Omwanza says keeping children off farms
and streets is difficult because of extreme poverty. Miraa pickers are
locally known as Ntungi — the uneducated. The Government official regrets majority of
the affected children are aged between 11 and 16. The ones
who find the going tough, he says, eventually graduate into street
children. Maua
town has about 67 street children. The officer says the figure has reduced
from more than 100 in January after his department and the provincial
administration re-united some of them with their parents. Others were placed
in approved schools through local courts orders. Guidance and counselling
helps street children reintegrate into the society. The very vulnerable
orphans, he says, are usually taken to children’s homes while others have
caregivers appointed for them through the cash transfer programme. Under the programme,
caretakers or guardians are given Sh1,000 every
month to provide for food, clothing, education and medical care. Kenya:
Awori Warns of Increasing Number of Street Children The number of street children
could hit 2.5 million by 2010, unless there is urgent intervention,
Vice-President, Mr Moody Awori,
warns. Kenya:
Former Street Boys Bail Out 'Comrades' Mr Lubale,
Mr Njenga and Mr Akumu are a product of
various children's homes in Uasin Gishu but feel the homes were not doing enough to
rehabilitate the children. They accused
the homes of being centres of oppression and
mistreatment. They said it was their experience in the homes that they
decided to form the organisation to help their
comrades. The lobbyists joined the homes
with a lot of expectations - they expected their lives to change for the
better after going through rough times in the street at tender age. Today the three look back with a lot of
bitterness because the homes did not mould them to be what they wished to be
in life. Instead, they were released
back to the streets and found things worse than before, a fact that has made
many people who passed through the homes to end up in prison, becoming
criminals or prostitutes. "There are so many children's
homes in the country. Why don't we see the children trooping from streets to
these homes? Instead we see children running away from the homes to go back
to the streets," they said. The
three lobbyists are convinced there is something not right in the homes for
them not to be attractive to street children. Scouts
Canada Helps Break Cycle of Poverty for Kids in Kenya "I'm so amazed to be here in
Canada," explains Peter Kariuki, a former
street Scout and now a leader of an Extension Scout Troop in Nairobi.
"When I was first approached by Scouters on
the streets of Nairobi at the age of ten, I was living on the streets,
scrounging through garbage heaps. Scouting changed my life, as it enabled me
to get an education and provided me with valuable life skills. I'm now in my
third year of university studying social and community development. Scouting
makes such an incredible difference in so many lives where children are
homeless with little hope for a future. I want to contribute to this Movement
by giving back to others what Scouting has given to me." For
2 runaway brothers, an education comes against tremendous odds School was the last thing on
Pascal Mwanchoka's mind when he and his younger
brother boarded a bus that would take them far from their mother and her
alcohol-fueled rages. Just 13 years
old, Pascal figured the boys' schooldays were over for good. "My mother wasn't feeding us, she
wasn't taking us to school," said Pascal, who came here from the coastal
city of Mombasa looking for work but ended up
living in the gutters of Nairobi. "She was a drunk." Less than a year later, Pascal and
10-year-old Lenjo are off the streets and back in
class, attending a free program in Nairobi for children too poor even to
afford a meal of maize and beans. They are among millions of children who
struggle against vast obstacles for the luxury of going to school on the
poorest continent in the world. Nairobi’s
Street Children: Hope for Kenya’s future generation “I lost my parents three years ago
and since then I have been living in the streets without shelter and
assurance of having food every day. Nobody cares about me; whether I live or
not,” said William Githira, 15, who lives in the
streets of the Kenyan capital.
“People don’t want to look at me. I’m trash. I don’t want to live in
the streets, but I have nobody. My uncle beat me hard when I lived there, and
so I ran. Living in the street is the only way to survive”, he added. Street children face endless
cruelties. Their rights have been violated many times by the adults who were
supposed to protect them. In many cases these children are subject to sexual
exploitation in return for food or clothes. Often, police detain and beat
them without reason. “Kenya is a mess!
The conditions for street children are terrible,” said Miriam Ndegwa, programme associate of
Youth Alive Kenya. Geoffrey, 23,
described his experience in a police station: “I was sleeping one night in
the street when the police came and took me to the police station. I did
nothing wrong. In the police station I was beaten to confess a crime I did
not do. [The police officer] wouldn’t stop until I agreed to what he said. He
beat me everywhere with his cane.” Human
Rights Watch - Street Children In Bulgaria, Guatemala, India, and
Kenya, Human Rights Watch has
reported that police violence against street children is pervasive, and
impunity is the norm. The failure of law enforcement bodies to promptly and
effectively investigate and prosecute cases of abuse against street children allows
the violence to continue. Establishing police accountability is further
hampered by the fact that street children often have no recourse but to
complain directly to police about police abuses. The threat of police
reprisals against them serves as a serious deterrent to any child coming
forward to testify or make a complaint against an officer. Street
children given new life Each day parents across the U.S.
practically have to drag their children out of bed as the children beg to
stay home from school. Meanwhile, in
Kenya, thousands of children wake up near trash piles, unaware of where their
parents are. No one is yelling that
breakfast is ready. No one is reminding them to wash behind their ears or to
brush their teeth. In 2002, the East
African Standard, a national newspaper in Kenya, reported a conservative
estimate of 250,000 children living on the streets in urban areas of Kenya. These children are often involved in theft,
drug trafficking, assault, trespassing and property damage. Some face
harassment, as well as physical and sexual abuse from police and within the
juvenile justice system, according to the newspaper. “When they grow up, and they are
strong, and they’re not taken care of, they become not now begging but
demanding, ‘Give me your vehicle keys, or I shoot you,” Kabuba
says. “Before, they were begging, ‘Give me a schilling or I smear you with
human waste.’” Oftentimes street children use one
hand to beg and with the other hand hold human waste and threaten to smear it
on someone who won’t give them money, Kabuba says. Picture this: You enter a deserted
city street and, believing you are safe, you suddenly sense unwelcome company
from behind. Stealthily increasing your pace, obviously terrified about
prospects of being mugged, physically injured or smeared with grime, you are
transfixed when another street boy appears just ahead of you. You are
trapped! Such were the scenarios that
inhabitants of Nairobi were treated to, before street children were cleared
from the city streets a few years back. But where did these kids go and what
became of them? Kenya
and Ireland work together - Helping street kids of Nairobi Official estimates put the number
of street children in Nairobi between 50,000-60,000. Street kids raid
poverty summit Dozens of street children have
invaded a five-star hotel food tent and feasted on meals meant for sale at
the World Social Forum in Kenya's capital.
The hungry urchins were joined by other participants who complained
that the food was too expensive at the annual anti-capitalist get together. Committee
on Rights of Child examines report of Kenya - 2007 PRESENTATION OF REPORT - One of the greatest challenges Kenya faced was the
increasing number of children living and working in the streets, Mr. Awori observed. The Government had started an initiative
in 2003 to rehabilitate street children under which 6,000 former street
children had been rehabilitated and enrolled in different primary schools
countrywide and 800 children had acquired vocational skills in various
national youth service units countrywide. Street
Children, A Waiting Disaster When a section of a population
fails to achieve or acquire what it needs, it finds a way of manifesting the
problem. In a city like Nairobi, it is paying for letting loose the street
children. They have now grown into street adults hardened by the conditions
they went through. They steal and rob with impunity. The police and country
are grappling with the problem to date. A pedestrian’s security on any Kenyan
street is not guaranteed. African
trio takes World Bank to task For Kangethe,
the program has been "a life changing experience" after spending
seven years on the streets of Dagoretti, a
sprawling slum 10km west of downtown Nairobi that is home to an estimated
240,000 people. "I used to eat from trash
cans, beg for money and steal food," said Kangethe
of his life on the street after he left home because of the routine beatings
he suffered at the hands of his alcoholic father. "I slept in the cold, covered only
with a gunny sack," he said. "I was addicted to sniffing glue and marijuana
but now I know how to shoot film, write scripts, interview people and edit
video." "I have hope for my
future," he added. Spearheading
Africa’s green revolution She also visited
homesteads that were deserted because children had taken to the streets of Kisumu after their parents succumbed to Aids related
complications. At the end of her
visit she decided to do something about the situation. "I resolved to
teach orphans and widows how to farm so that they could be able to feed
themselves and stay in the homesteads," she says. She rented a
quarter-acre-piece of land at the Maseno Farmers
Training Centre in Kisumu and bred broilers, cows
and goats. She also made peanut butter, kept bees and planted vegetables.
"I started from scratch. I had no money but I resolved to help the
widows and orphans to use the available resource — land," she says. Unfortunately, not all the
children of Manyatta can attend the school; many
peer over the barbed wire fences surrounding the school, listening in and
watching the school children playfully learning. According to UNICEF, Kisumu now offers free public education for primary
school children, yet we encountered large numbers of children on the other
side of the school fence. It appears that their education is still not
entirely free: they must buy uniforms and other school supplies. Some
children we met claimed they were forced to leave their schools when they
could not afford their fees. And according to UNICEF, orphaned children are
likely to drop out of school for a myriad of factors. One common reason is
that nearly an entire generation of their families, parents, grandparents,
aunts, and uncles has been wiped out by HIV and AIDS, leaving no one to take
care of them or to provide them with guidance and supervision. Others leave
school to nurse sick relatives or to work to support their siblings. Former
street boy wins international award Nduati is now appealing to parents to
readmit reformed street children into their homes. He also wants teachers to
accommodate, instead of mocking the children when they seek readmission. PARENTS RELUCTANT TO READMIT
REFORMED CHILDREN -
He told The Standard that while some parents were reluctant to readmit the
reformed children, some teachers also mocked them, sending them back into the
streets. “Street people are normal and
need understanding, love, patience and care or they run back to the streets,”
he said. There are about sixty thousand
street children in Nairobi today. The Kivuli Centre came into being with these children in
mind. With the passing of time, the
welcome centre was transformed into a fully-fledged social centre available
to all the poor people of Riruta and Kawangware areas. Infact, besides giving shelter to 50 children, supporting
the school fees for further 70 and enlisting further 150 children in
animation and recreational activities; the centre made available to the
inhabitants of the area: a small clinic-dispensary, a well with drinkable
water, a library with electric light until late in the evening, room for
different associations opened to the young of the area for meetings,
discussions, debates and cultural aims. Children's home petitions government1 Shangilia Mtoto wa Africa destitute children’s home wants the government
to support the children through formal education on their onward match to
rewarding future careers. The chidren's home is
situated in the heart of the sprawling dusty Kangemi
slums, 12 kilo metres from the city centre on the
Nairobi-Nakuru highway. The home is currently
caring for 230 former street children. Kenyan
officials seek ideas for helping orphans When describing Kibera, a section of Nairobi, Mr. Boisvert
said one should picture 850,000 people living in New York City’s Central Park
with no sewers, no trash collection, and no running water and with children
rearing children. “So that’s a slum
where a lot of kids live,” Ms. Githaiga added. Plans were mooted to set up
rehabilitation centers for thousands of street children, a project that however
appears to have lost momentum as the years roll by. In Nairobi, several centres were set up at the time to serve as temporary
holding grounds for the street families, in Pumwani,
Kariakor, Kayole, Shauri Moyo, Kibera and Bahati. Currently,
only two of these centres are operational. Occupants of the closed centres have since gone back to the streets. Those who
opted to stay, have gone on to complete various
courses in hairdressing, tailoring, mechanics and catering. Trip
to Kenya reveals truth, changes life According to globalgiving.com,
there are approximately 2,000 street children in Eldoret.
George works with a roster of 58. We sat in his office as he explained the
work he does. Just as we were leaving,
George ran into two mothers who were there seeking his help. One mother was looking for her son, who was
reluctant to go home because he enjoys life on the street. She was a teenage orphan living on
the streets of Nairobi when a man approached her and promised her work in the
United Kingdom. He told her she would be working as a house girl. True to his word, her
"savior" brought her into the U.K. -- but instead of placing her
with a family the man took her to a brothel, where she was systematically
raped, beaten, and forced to work as a prostitute. Three months later, when the
16-year-old Kenyan girl became pregnant, she was forced to continue sleeping
with a succession of men until she was almost due to give birth. The heavily
pregnant teenager was then removed from the brothel, driven out of the town
where she had been held, and dumped many miles away on the streets of
Sheffield. Four
months working in Nairobi "The street kids attending
this project were mainly boys around the ages of 11 to 18 years who had spent
anything from 4 - 6 years or more sleeping rough on the streets." Working with the others on the
project, she quickly appreciated that many of the boys still slept rough and,
so she was able to establish three rooms in the slum which now act as a night
shelter. "Having this shelter can keep some of the boys away from other
street groups and possibly away from the curse of glue sniffing, which is
prevalent in such areas", she explained. Sex workers pose major threat to students1 Further, a local social hall that
is being used by the Nairobi City Council to rehabilitate street children was
identified as another major threat to the schooling children. Wangare said: “These are no street children. They are
teenagers and adults whose experiences in the fast lane of life have hardened
them. To them, sex, drugs and money are issues they hold dear. To the
unexposed children within this area, they represent a kind of gangsterism life that is exciting and adventurous. We
demand that such rehabilitation centres be
established far from family units.” New
approach to helping Kenya's street children Sniffing glue and smoking
marijuana are often the only comforts street children know. On the poorest
continent in the world, the children are the poorest of the poor, depending
on begging, theft and prostitution to survive. Street children describe a life of
almost constant violence and fear. Stronger children regularly beat the
others, police raid their hideouts and sexual abuse is rampant, the children
say. What became of street families rehab project? 1 Perhaps most troubling is that
barely into its fourth year, the families we had been made to believe were to
be cleared from the streets have since made a comeback. Plight of
streetchildren important issue in Africa Streetchildren are a problem that
differs according to gender. Whereas boys might find themselves in a position
of begging or working as parking boys for survival, girls in the same
predicament engage in survival prostitution. Girls are therefore harassed by
the police in more frightening ways than boys. Sadly enough, it is the harrassment and negative adult reactions, not their hunger, that troubles streetchildren the most. Isolation
and distrust cause them the greatest pain. Once, while I was in Kenya, a
police officer stopped a streetboy who was walking
with me and helping me carry boxes. He immediately assumed the boy was about
to steal from me and chased him while swinging a baton. He forbid
the boy to go near any white lady, threatening him with arrest, even after I
protested and defended him. The kids invariably are accused of lying. A Kenyan court charged an American
woman on Tuesday with sexually assaulting several street boys at a Nairobi
shelter where she was doing volunteer rehabilitation work. Nairobi is teeming with tens of
thousands of scruffy, glue-sniffing street children and a 2003 government
plan to place them in proper housing and offer them vocational training has
floundered due to a lack of funds and enforcement. JUVENILE INJUSTICE: Police
Abuse And Detention Of Street Children In Kenya Street children in SOS Children: Street Children
in Kenya Some are sent out by their
impoverished parents to work or to beg. Others have lost their families through
war or illness, and some have simply been abandoned because they have become
too much of a burden. These street children scrabble to maintain the most
basic form of existence. They polish shoes, wash windscreens, pick pockets
and beg. Most of them take drugs when they can, are malnourished and are
sick. Sexual Abuse Part of Life
for Kenya's Street Children Sexual exploitation is a fact of
life for them. They can't avoid sexual
abuse because when they sleep, wherever they sleep, it's on the streets. For girls on the streets, as young as six
or seven years, sexual abuse usually starts in gangs. When they are new on the streets, they are
raped in order to be accepted as a member of the street gang, KENYA:
Soccer Tournament Highlights Plight of Street Children Hundreds of Kenyan slum and street
children on Thursday thronged the National Stadium in Nairobi, the Kenyan
capital, to take part in the finals of a month-long soccer tournament, as
part of a concerted initiative launched this year to combat drug abuse and
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV/AIDS, among these high-risk
youth. NGOs Concerned at
"Society Failing Street Children" Although the Kenyan parliament
last year passed a new law to protect children from neglect and abuse, a
combination of economic and social factors is forcing more and more children
to continue pouring into the streets throughout the country, according to
local nongovernmental organizations Temperament
Characteristics of Street and Non-Street Children in Eldoret,
Kenya Objective: To examine the interaction of
temperament and environment and how these impact on the psychological
function of street children and non-street children in Eldoret
Conclusion: These results support earlier
research on street children. Counter to public opinion and hostility, the
children are resilient, adaptable and flexible in the face of adversity and
remaining well adjusted as individuals. Health
Problems of Street Children in Eldoret, Kenya Street children have a high
incidence of childhood diseases.
Factors determining occurrence of disease among street children are as
in normal children. Respiratory and
skin diseases were the leading causes of morbidity. Drug abuse was rampant among the street
children Kitale has a particularly large
population of street children with estimates of between 200 and over 500
children on the streets at any one time. Estimates vary depending on how one
defines a street child The ragged dirty boy held out his
hand. My heart tried to ignore him. But there he was standing in front of me.
I shake my head and move on, a bundle of mixed emotions. I didn't have any change but that wasn't
the real reason. We were told not to give them money. They would only go buy
glue to sniff. Their rights as children are
systematically denied, breaking down every single clause of the United
National 1990 Convention on Children’s Rights. Their health, protection and
development, even their very survival, are in jeopardy. Some are just sent away to earn
some money to feed the family. Others might be thrown out, or driven by
simple hunger. Very painful is that a lot of them drop out of school because
their parents can't, or won't pay their school fees, books or uniforms, which
often form a great burden for a poor family. Some of them, especially girls,
are hired out by their parents as household servants. Children who are being
abused or neglected run away from home. Parents disappear or die, by AIDS or
another disease, and if there are no other relatives there's not much of a
choice left for many children. A growing amount of them are being raised on
the streets; born from parents that live on the streets themselves. One could
think of many other factors that push a child onto the streets. Nairobi's Street Children1 The children whose parents can't
afford to send them to school are left alone in the slums during the day.
Beset by hunger and boredom, they will often find their way into the city
centre. Here, they find other children like themselves, already living on the
streets. Many of these street children
remain separated from their families, who might have no idea where they have
gone. They find places to sleep in the
city, and their day-to-day existence consists of begging for a few Shillings
to buy some bread. Some of these children are as
young as four years of age. The reasons these children turn to the streets
are many, but the most common one is the poverty their families' face. Most
often, hunger is the closest friend of a street child. Unfortunately, many of
them turn to sniffing glue from glue sticks. They are children who cannot rely
on their families to provide them what's necessary to live and grow up
peacefully. Even though few of them still maintain some kind of bond with
their parents, particularly with their mothers, street children live by their
wits in the back streets of huge cities, begging, collecting garbage to be
recycled, committing thefts or prostituting themselves. Social
Break-Up In Kenya - An Impressive Number Of Street Children They wander aimlessly, in the
indifference of local authorities and private citizens, organized into gangs
searching for something to eat and for money to buy glue they use a drug.
Their ages range between six and eighteen years old and they are homeless The
Daily Battles of Nairobi's Street Children THE MANY FACETS OF VIOLENCE ON THE
STREETS - The
increasing violence towards street children has only recently been
documented. Although there are now more statistics and reports on the issue,
the extent of the problem can never be under-estimated. Sleeping on the
pavement unprotected and forced to beg or steal for survival, street children
are constantly exposed to the risk of violence and exploitation. 1 The linked article has been taken
down, moved or restricted All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC §
107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use |
Human Trafficking in [Kenya] [other countries]Street Children in [Kenya Child Prostitution in [Kenya] [other countries]