Prevalence,
Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the first decade of the 21st Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/SaudiArabia.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
and accompanying text have been culled from the web to illuminate the
situation in 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 *** Child beggars
thrive on Muslim holy season in Gulf states Agence France-Presse AFP, afghanforum.afghansite.com/index.php?showtopic=427 [accessed 12
February 2015] www.middle-east-online.com/English/?id=22647 [accessed 21
November 2016] According to a
study by the Imam Mohammad bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh published in
the Saudi daily Okaz, more than 80,000 "street
children" can be found at any one time in the six oil-rich Gulf Arab
monarchies -- Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates. ***
ARCHIVES *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61698.htm [accessed 29 March
2020] CHILDREN
-
Abuse of children was a problem, although it was difficult to gauge the
prevalence of child abuse, since the government kept no national statistics
on such cases. Although in general the culture greatly prizes children,
studies by citizen female doctors indicated that severe abuse and neglect of children
appeared to be more widespread than previously reported. At least two NGOs,
one in In 2003, the MOI's
center for crime prevention and research reported that 21 percent of male
children suffered from some form of abuse. The report stated that 34 percent
of the abused suffered from some sort of psychological abuse, and 25 percent
suffered physical abuse. The figures excluded female children and accusations
of sexual abuse, as the ministry stated that the issues were too sensitive
for public discussion. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, 26 January 2001 www1.umn.edu/humanrts/crc/saudiarabia2001.html [accessed 21
December 2010] [7] The Committee
is concerned that the broad and imprecise nature of the State party's general
reservation potentially negates many of the Convention's provisions and
raises concern as to its compatibility with the object and purpose of the
Convention, as well as the overall implementation of the Convention. Street life hits
the most vulnerable Abdulrahman Khataresh, Hassan Qurbi, and
Hussain Hazazi, The Saudi Gazette, Jeddah, Oct 17,
2008 www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2008101719396 [accessed 17 July
2011] www.sauress.com/en/saudigazette/19396 [accessed 3 January
2017] A recently
published study from the research center at King Fahd Security College in
Riyadh found that the Kingdom is home to 83,000 street children with their
earnings, made through a variety of criminal activities, going to their
families or gang ringleaders. The
study says the average age of the children is 7 years old and that they
generally originate from poorly educated families, with extreme poverty cited
as the most significant factor. Although a
relatively recent phenomenon in the Kingdom, the presence of children living
and working on the street has increased noticeably with the huge influx of
illegally smuggled children from Asia and Africa, mostly through the southern
border with Yemen. Neglected by
families, often deployed by gangs, organized groups of children aged between
6 and 15 group and train before being let loose to roam the streets and earn
a crust through anything from pickpocketing to armed robbery. Away from the battlefield, the gang leaders
give orders from dilapidated houses in the most rundown neighborhoods in
town. For months boys are
manipulated and trained before they head for the street for illegal beggary,
and sometimes violence, to fatten the bank account of their master, and
sometimes even the biological father.
The remit of such a child may include daily begging with no days off,
distributing contraband material, and robbing shops, with some possible drug
use to numb the pain and deal with the hardships of street life. Jeddah is
recorded as the most popular place for children to beg in,
followed by Makkah and Riyadh. Street
children under 20 years old also commonly fall victim to sexual abuse and
exploitation, says Mani Al-Dajani, a sociologist at
38,000 ‘street’
children in Kingdom, says study Hussien Hazazi,
The Saudi Gazette, Jeddah, Oct 10, 2008 www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2008101018802 [accessed 17 July
2011] There are nearly 38,000
children on the Kingdom’s streets, according to a recent study published in
the Security Research Journal. Some 68
percent of these children are foreign vendors and beggars. Most of these were
found to have entered the Kingdom on Umrah or Haj
visa but never left Makkah. The study
found that the families of these children could not afford their education,
compelling them to drop out of school and have a second home in the street. The study found that living on the street
would lead them to child labor, beggary, crime, and drug addiction. 83,000 homeless
children roam Saudi streets - study Mariam Al Hakeem,
Gulf News, gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/83-000-homeless-children-roam-saudi-streets-study-1.171725 [accessed 17 July
2011] Around 83,000
homeless children are roaming the streets of Rude awakening Peter At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 17 July
2011] UNICEF discovered
child trafficking in Parents, children
complicit in human trafficking - Report Mohammed At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 17 July
2011] The report found
that most children started the journey accompanied by a direct relation,
although some children traveled with other children instead. According to the study, just over 50% fell
within the age range 13-16 years old, and of the 59 cases, only two were
girls. On arrival in Improving
Living Environments for the Low-Income Households MOST Clearing House
Best Practices www.unesco.org/most/mideast3.htm [accessed 17 July
2011] www.vcn.bc.ca/citizens-handbook/unesco/most/mideast3.html [accessed 3 January
2017] NARRATIVE - For the urban poor,
mainly the low-income people, the government launched a serviced land plots
program aimed at providing them free land plots so that they could build
their own dwellings with interest-free loans from the Real Estate Development
Fund. In Illegal EXPATS
remain on streets despite order saudielection.com/news_body.php?id=250 [Last access date
unavailable] Many of the
homeless arrived in The homeless often
sleep in makeshift shelters and wait for daily food to be delivered by
charities. Many have lived in the district for about one year after failing
to use their round trip airline tickets in a timely manner. Conference May
Break Taboo On Sexual Abuse In Arab Countries Dima Hamdan, At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 17 July
2011] All experts on the All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
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