Prevalence,
Abuse & Exploitation of Street Children In the first decade of the 21st
Century gvnet.com/streetchildren/Somalia.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 *** Survival of the
fittest Independent Online
(IOL) News, www.iol.co.za/news/africa/survival-of-the-fittest-1.392590 [accessed 20 July
2011] news.iafrica.com/features/32145.html [accessed 4 January
2017] Stray bullets and
molesters are only some of the dangers 11-year-old Abdi Mohamed Abdusamad faces when he chooses a place to sleep in the
streets of Mogadishu. War and poverty
have thrown thousands of children into the streets of the Somali capital,
leaving them in the crossfire of one of the world's most brutal guerrilla
wars and exposed to disease, drugs and sexual violence. Abdi spends his days collecting plastic
bottles as well as the bags in which khat
deliveries arrive several times a day to satisfy the Somali male population's
addiction to the mild narcotic plant.
The children wash them and sell them back, earning enough to buy one
or two packs of cigarettes on which they can then make a small profit selling
by the stick. "Sometimes the
little money you have earned in the day is taken away by an older street
boy... There are also those who want to molest the younger children,"
says Abdi. A torn red tee-shirt
dangles from his bony shoulders as from a hanger. His face is covered in
dirt. "I only get a chance to wash on Fridays," he says. ***
ARCHIVES *** The Department of Labor’s 2004 Findings on
the Worst Forms of Child Labor www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/tda2004/somalia.htm [accessed 23
December 2010] INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - Self-employment and casual labor were more often
observed in urban areas, while unpaid farm labor was the primary form
observed in rural areas. Boys as young
as 14 or 15 have participated in combat and many belong to gangs who raid
indiscriminately. In 1999 UNICEF
estimated that 58.4 percent of primary school-age children attended school,
and that 72.5 percent of children who had started primary school were likely
to reach grade 5. Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61592.htm [accessed 11
February 2020] CHILDREN
– The
authorities were generally not committed to children's rights and welfare.
The lack of resources limited the opportunity for children to attend school.
Approximately 22 percent of the school-aged population attended school,
according to UNICEF officials. Children remained
among the chief victims of the continuing violence. Boys as young as 14 or 15
years of age have participated in militia attacks, and many youths were
members of the marauding gangs known as "morian" (parasites or
maggots). This year's annual report of the Secretary-General on children and
armed conflict documented grave violations against children in UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, Hargeisa, 16 June 2009 www.irinnews.org/report/84864/somalia-just-another-day-for-hargeisa-s-street-children [accessed 10 March
2015] My family lives in Burao [about 150km east of Hargeisa]," one child
said. "We were so many children. One day I decided to travel to Hargeisa
and never went back home."
Social workers in the city say drought and economic hardship have
forced an unprecedented number of children on to the streets. The children lack adequate shelter,
healthcare, education, protection and guidance. Drug abuse is common and many
are involved in activities such as pick-pocketing to cover drug costs. "We interviewed 150 street children,
scattered throughout the city, and 88 percent confessed to have experienced
different abuse, including sexual abuse and harassment," Khadar Nuur, chairman of Hargeisa Child Protection Network,
said. In their struggle
to survive, some of the children have committed crimes and found themselves
in prison. "We know that a
number of street children were sent to prison by the security committees in
Hargeisa," Kalil said. "We are worried
about their situation in prison because they are detained with old people,
including criminals." Lul Hassan, who is in charge of child protection at the
Somaliland National Human Rights Commission, said the children's prison at Mija Asseye would be
rehabilitated soon. According to the
commission, an estimated 60 children join others on the streets monthly. Many of the new arrivals are girls - a
phenomenon that was previously uncommon. "We met about 15 female street
children, who had suffered sexual abuse," Kalil
said. "The number of female street children has increased from 4 to 8
percent." Mustafa Haji Abdinur, Middle East Online, www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=30975 [accessed 20 July
2011] In THE CHILDREN ARE
FACING THE WORST TIME EVER - The young boy lives with his mother and two sisters
in a shelter made of plastic lining stretched over a flimsy structure of
twigs, in one of the camps for the displaced where fighting in Mogadishu has
regurgitated hundreds of thousands of families. Abdurrahman Warsameh, Inter Press Service News Agency IPS, www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45482 [accessed 20 July
2011] www.ipsnews.net/2009/01/somalia-poverty-forces-children-into-the-streets/ [accessed 4 January
2017] Hassan Maye, 13,
has been fending for himself and his family in the streets of Mogadishu since
he was ten. He shines shoes in the Sinai neighbourhood
in the southern part of the Somali capital. On a good day, he says he earns
18,000 shillings - equivalent to roughly 50 cents. Maye risks danger every day for this
meagre income, as shooting regularly flares up around his workplace. He also
has to keep an eye out for the gangs of armed freelance robbers that roam the
streets of Mogadishu. His earnings
make a small contribution to the income of the household he shares with his
grandparents and sister. There are other
street children who do not work but are instead engaged in begging to
survive. Most of those beggars are from the more recently displaced people
who have left their home villages to come to Mogadishu because of violence,
famine or drought that prevent them from continuing to farm on their lands. They
are rarely able to find even low-paid work like Maye because the small cost
of setting up - brushes and polish, needles and thread to repair damaged
shoes - are beyond them. Maye and his mates were fortunate to be set up by a
relative or neighbour. UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, Hargeisa, 22 October 2008 www.irinnews.org/report/81052/somalia-conflict-drought-force-more-children-onto-hargeisa-streets [accessed 10 March
2015] Shoe-shining and
car-washing are the jobs of choice for most of the street boys in Hargeisa, while the girls mostly clean or sweep business
premises or clean people’s homes. Most beg, Osman said. While on the streets, many children often
suffer abuse, violence and particularly sexual abuse. "Many of those…
that sleep on street corners have been victims of sexual violence,"
Osman said. "On the street at night they are easy prey with no one to
protect them." RISKS - Many have been
infected with "all sort of diseases, including HIV/AIDS and they don't
even know what that is," he added.
He said many of the street children had taken to tying a sack over the
lower part of their bodies when sleeping at night. "It is an attempt to
protect themselves." Nasir Ahmed, 12,
survives by washing cars. On average, he takes home 40,000 Somaliland
shillings (about US$6.50) per day.
"What I make from washing cars is what my mother and sisters and
I eat,” he told IRIN. Ahmed’s father
died in 2007, when the responsibility of caring for the family fell on
him. “My mother used to sell
vegetables in the market but she was not making enough so I told her `I will
do the work. You stay at home and take care of the girls’,” he said. Garowe Online, www.garoweonline.com/artman2/publish/Africa_22/Somalia_children_homeless_on_Kenya_streets.shtml [accessed 21 July
2011] Somali journalist Abdikarim Muhsin, the Garowe Online correspondent in Street children in www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-196064177.html [partially accessed
21 July 2011 - access restricted] Mohamed Ali Madey, an eight-year-old shoe shiner, came to Although his
clothes are filthy, Madey is a tall, handsome boy.
Seemingly embarrassed by this he explains that he usually tries to bathe once
a week at his aunt’s house in the Howlwadaag
neighborhood, but he only gets a little food and a short time to wash each
time he visits her. Madey arrives at the street corner early every morning in
an attempt to get more customers, but this is a dangerous practice because
Ethiopian/TFG troops often set up roadblocks nearby. He is afraid he may be
wounded in a roadside bombing or shot dead like his friend Yasin Adle Ahmed, who was
killed by Ethiopian troops on Makka Al-Mukarrama Street nearby. “My friend Hassan Muruq was killed when Ugandan troops came under attack by
armed men at KM4, where Hassan had been sleeping in front of a shop. I was
with him, but I crawled away and escaped as I saw my friend Hassan pouring
blood and taking his final breath,” he says.
Madey adds that a third friend, Hussein Shelare, died after a soldier shot him, mistaking him for
an Islamist insurgent. Witnesses confirm Shelare
was unarmed and had only been walking home from work in the Waberi district, a route he took regularly. Clutching a glue
bag in his right hand, Madey says he likes to sniff
it for pleasure. Told that such habits are harmful, he responds that he did
not know the practice was unhealthy. Madey also collects the remains of the khat (a mild stimulant plant chewed for pleasure) at the
teashop and hawks them, along with packets of cigarettes he buys to make some
additional profit. The main concern of Madey and
his fellow shoe shiners are bullying and robbery at the hands of older street
children armed with knives and the occasional firearm. UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, www.irinnews.org/report/79823/somalia-street-children-increase-as-food-insecurity-grips-region [accessed 10 March
2015] The Long Journey Peter Koch, Artvoice AV, Issue v5n40, 5 October 2006 artvoice.com/issues/v5n40/long_journey.html [accessed 21 July
2011] AHMED HASSAN
… In 1991, he was shot in the back and robbed by one of Mogadishu’s countless
khat-chewing, gun-toting street children. “I’ll
show you,” he says to me, standing up and removing his jacket. He rolls up
his shirtsleeve and shows me the light brown circle of scar tissue on his
bicep, where the bullet exited. It went into his back and came out his side
before penetrating his arm. “They shoot first, ask questions later. But what
can I do?” IRIN
humanitarian news and analysis UN Integrated
Regional Information Networks IRIN, In-Depth, January 2003 www.irinnews.org/InDepthMain.aspx?InDepthId=44&ReportId=71635 [accessed 10 March
2015] www.ecoi.net/file_upload/sb89_ocha-som-sepchildren-0103.pdf [accessed 4 January
2017] [page 61] THE PLIGHT OF SOMALI
CHILDREN
- In Hargeysa, young homeless girls sleep in among the petrol containers in
the hope that the smell and the danger of the petrol will keep away potential
attackers. Having to live on the streets of the large urban centers is one of
the most dangerous prospects for Somali children. In some cases street
children were forced to beg for gangs after being raped and beaten. UNICEF Humanitarian
Action: United Nations
Children's Fund UNICEF, 4 Jun 2004 www.mbali.info/newsfile3.htm [accessed 21 July
2011] www.unicef.org/emerg/files/Emergencies_Somalia_Donor_Update_040604.pdf [accessed 4 January
2017] [scroll down] PROTECTION AND YOUTH
PARTICIPATION - During the first
quarter of the year, child protection coordination networks have been
established in Bari, Nugal, Mudug, Benadir, Lower Shabelle and Hiran regions,
and similar initiatives are under way in other areas. Successful efforts include: access to
education for disadvantaged children; commitment from businesspeople to
provide support and care to street children; community action to protect
children against prostitution and exploitative labor; and the commitment of
some militia leaders to support children's attendance in school as opposed to
involvement in the conflicts. Profile of Internal
Displacement : Norwegian Refugee
Council/Global IDP Project, www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/2849BC4616EC282C802570B50053ED1A/$file/Somalia+-May+2004.pdf [accessed 21 July
2011] www.internal-displacement.org/assets/library/Africa/Somalia/pdf/Somalia+-May+2004.pdf [accessed 4 January
2017] [page 148] In the ICRC-supported hospital
south of Mogadishu, as many as 90% of all patients are gunshot-wounded
civilians most of whom are IDPs and street children Profile of Internal
Displacement : Norwegian Refugee
Council/Global IDP Project, www.madhibaan.org/in-depth/Somalia+-June+2003.pdf [accessed 21 July
2011] [page 53] DISPLACED CHILDREN LACK
PROTECTION
- Displaced children often from southern minority groups are forced to seek
‘protection’ by joining urban gangs … Displaced children are often exploited
and have jobs dangerous to their health … Children displaced from minority
groups suffer from deprivation and abuse … Displaced children are sexually
abused … Displaced children in single-headed families often end up on the
streets and are often drawn into drug-dependency Decision by Giselle Guedes, Pravda Ru, 05 February 2004 english.pravda.ru/world/africa/05-02-2004/4777-somalia-0/ [accessed 21 July
2011] Several orphanages
will be forced to close their doors in the coming days due to a lack of
financing, resulting in at least three thousand children being abandoned in
the streets. The reason: the entity which financed these orphanages, the aid
agency Al-Haramayn, from Horn of Novib Civil Society Organisations - Profiles At one time this
article had been archived and may possibly still be accessible [here] [accessed 21 July
2011] [scroll down] STREET CHILDREN
REHABILITATION PROJECT
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