User talk:Almudo/Streetchildren

Ok, instead of sniping away at the current article on "Street Children" I've decided to write it from scratch. All advice appreciated.

Street Children

While street children may number in the tens of millions globally, it is difficult to describe them with much precision. There are a number of stereotypes, including the romantic vision of the young streetkid as devil-may-care, wise-beyond-his-years, cocky, smart and independent - a sort of urban Huckleberry Finn. Jacob Riis, for example, described street children in 1890 New York as follows:

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....

More often now they are portrayed as innocent victims of dysfunctional families or an uncaring society, thrown defenselessly into a milieu of predators, traffickers, drug dealers and pimps. Others simply view them as juvenile delinquents, disturbed youth who deserve no sympathy or assistance. While there are some street children who fit these descriptions, the vast majority lie between these stereotypes, individual children with unique stories that have led them to what is, for most, a dangerous, difficult and damaging childhood.

Names

Street Children is a widely used term in the English language and has analogues in other languages such as French (les enfants des rues), Spanish (niños de la calle), Portuguese (meninos da rua) and German (straßenkinder). Street kids is also commonly employed although it is sometimes thought to be pejorative. In other languages children who live and/or work in the streets are known by many names. Some examples are listed below:

"gamin" (urchin) and "chinches" (bed bugs) in Colombia, "marginais" (criminals/marginals) in Rio, "pajaro frutero" (fruit birds) in Peru, "polillas" (moths) in Bolivia, "resistoleros" (little rebels) in Honduras, "scugnizzi" (spinning tops) in Naples, "Bui Doi" (dust children) in Vietnam, "saligoman" (nasty kids) in Rwanda, or "poussins" (chicks), "moustiques" (mosquitos) in Cameroon and "balados" (wanderers) in Zaire and Congo.

Definitions

The question of how to define a street child has generated much discussion that is usefully summarized by Sarah Thomas de Benítez in, "The State of the World's Street Children: Violence."

‘Street children’ is increasingly recognized by sociologists and anthropologists

to be a socially constructed category that in reality does not form a clearly defined, homogeneous population or phenomenon (Glauser, 1990; Ennew, 2000; Moura, 2002). ‘Street children’ covers children in such a wide variety of circumstances and characteristics that policy-makers and service providers find it difficult to describe and target them. Upon peeling away the ‘street children’ label, individual girls and boys of all ages are found living and working in public spaces, visible in the great majority of

the world’s urban centres.

The definition of ‘street children’ is contested, but many practitioners and policymakers

use UNICEF’s concept of boys and girls aged under 18 for whom ‘the street’ (including unoccupied dwellings and wasteland) has become home and/or their source of

livelihood, and who are inadequately protected or supervised (Black, 1993).

Numbers, Distribution and Gender

Numbers

Estimating numbers of ‘street children’ is fraught with difficulties. In 1989, UNICEF

estimated 100 million children were growing up on urban streets around the world. 14 years later UNICEF reported: ‘The latest estimates put the numbers of these children as high as 100 million’ (UNICEF, 2002: 37). And even more recently: ‘The exact number of street children is impossible to quantify, but the figure almost certainly runs into tens of millions across the world. It is likely that the numbers are increasing’ (UNICEF, 2005: 40-41). The 100 million figure is still commonly cited, but has no basis in fact (see Ennew and Milne, 1989; Hecht, 1998; Green, 1998). Similarly, it is debatable whether numbers of street children are growing globally or whether it is the awareness of street children

within societies which has grown.

Distribution

Street children may be found on every continent in a large majority of the world's cities. The following estimates indicate the global extent of street child populations.

• Kenya 250,000 - 300,000
• Egypt 200,000 - 1 million
• Morocco 30,000
• India 11 million
• Vietnam 23,000
• Mongolia 3700 - 4000
• Philippines 200,000
• Brazil 7 - 10 million
• Uruguay 3000
• Jamaica 6,500
• Russia 1 - 3 million
  

While the majority are in underdeveloped or poor countries, they are also found in highly industrialized and relatively rich states such as Germany (10,000) and the USA (750,000 to 1 million).

Gender

Although there are variations from country to country, 70% or more of street children are boys.

History

Children sleeping in Mulberry Street - Jacob Riis photo New York, United States of America (1890)

Children making their home/livelihoods on the street is not a new or modern phenomenon. In the introduction to his history of abandoned children in Soviet Russia 1918 -1930, Alan Ball states:

Orphaned and abandoned children have been a source of misery from earliest times. They apparently accounted for most of the boy prostitutes in Augustan Rome and, a few centuries later, moved a church council of 442 in southern Gaul to declare: “Concerning abandoned children: there is general complaint that they are nowadays exposed more to dogs than to kindness.”[1] In tsarist Russia, seventeenth-century sources described destitute youths roaming the streets, and the phenomenon survived every attempt at eradication thereafter. Long before the Russian Revolution, the term besprizornye had gained wide currency.[2]

In 1890, Danish-American journalist Jacob Riis described "street arabs" in New York and his description of their characteristics and mode of life could easily be applied to modern street children.

Examples from popular fiction include Kipling's “Kim” as a street child in colonial India, and Fagin's crew of pickpockets in "Oliver Twist" as well as Sherlock Holmes' "Baker Street Irregulars" attest to the presence of street children in 19th century London.

Causes

Children may end up on the streets for several basic reasons: They may have no choice – they are abandoned, orphaned, or thrown out of their homes. Secondly, they may choose to live in the streets because of mistreatment or neglect or because their homes do not or cannot provide them with basic necessities. Many children also work in the streets because their earnings are needed by their families. But homes and families are part of the larger society and the underlying reasons for the poverty or breakdown of homes and families may be social, economic, political or environmental or any combination of these.

In a 1993 report, WHO offered the following list of causes for the phenomenon:

- family breakdown

- armed conflict
- poverty
- natural and man-made disasters
- famine
- physical and sexual abuse
- exploitation by adults
- dislocation through migration
- urbanization and overcrowding

- acculturation

The orphaning of children as a result of HIV/AIDS is another cause that might be added to this list.

Life on the Streets

Aside from the definitive characteristics of street children, that they are children who live and/or work in urban streets, other aspects of their lives are widespread.

Drug use

Drug use is endemic amongst street children populations – estimated to be as high as 99% in Romania, for example. Many drugs are used by street children but probably the most widely used are solvent-based inhalants such as glue and paint thinners since these are inexpensive, widely available, and legally obtainable by minors.

In Nepal:

Glue sniffing has become popular among street children because it is available, cheap, and produces an immediate, euphoric high. In Kathmandu, dendrite is the most commonly used inhalant among street children. Dendrite is a brand of industrial grade adhesive often used for shoe repair or home renovations. According to SAATHI Outreach Workers, a child can purchase enough dendrite to produce a drug induced high for 2 to 3 rupees. A tube of dendrite costs between 30 to 50 rupees. Inhalant users may experience euphoria, hallucinations, or a sense of invincibility. Accessibility is a key difference between dendrite and other street drugs. Various household items can be used for inhalant abuse. Permanent markers, correction pens, nail polish remover, aerosol hairspray, paint solvent, and gasoline are examples of easily accessible inhalants. Addicted children can easily purchase inhalants from local shopkeepers and shoemakers without suspicion.

In Morocco, "The Baiti association says 98% of children living on the streets in Morocco are now addicted to sniffing glue and the number is growing. They shine shoes, beg from passers-by or even sell their bodies in return for the $3 they need to buy a tube of glue. According to a government survey, more than 5,000 children are living on the streets of Casablanca alone. Almost all of them are glue addicts." In Botswana, “...drug and alcohol abuse is common among street children. Glue is most frequently used to attain a desired level of intoxication.

Street children use drugs to get high and also to cope with hunger, cold and other aspects of their difficult lives.

Sexual Activity

A majority of street children, including pre-adolescents, engage in sexual activities frequently and have multiple partners. Their sexual activities may be consensual, forced or transactional.

In Senegal,

"One sees eight-year-old children who already have several male and female partners who are older than they are," said Adjiratou Sow Diallo Diouf, author of a 2005 study on the impact of HIV/AIDS on Dakar’s estimated 6,000 street children.

The 30 children, aged between 8 and 17, Diouf questioned for the study revealed sexual relations that were both homosexual and heterosexual and rarely protected, leaving them highly vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. More than 70 percent of the children surveyed said they had multiple partners, often other children and one third admitted that the sex was not always consensual. "Sometimes they are forced into sex, and there were cases of rape of smaller children by older children," said Diouf.

Occasionally, the children have sex with young women who do laundry in the working class suburb of Médina. "Some women give them work but they want to sleep with them in return," explained Diouf.

In Romania, "...90% of children are raped on their first night" in the streets. In a study of sexual coercion amongst street boys in Bangalore, India:

74 (61%) out of 121 boys were sexually active. Four were initiated at age nine or younger. Most (36) were initiated between ages 10 and 12; twenty-one were 13–14 years old. Anal sex, which is usually a boy-to-boy activity, was the most commonly reported sexual behaviour, followed by vaginal sex. Few (8) practised solely vaginal or solely anal sex; the majority mentioned at least two behaviours. Older boys tend to have sex with girls as well as anal sex with boys. At times friends have anal sex, oral sex or practise mutual masturbation.

In Rwanda, a survey in 2002 found, "Just over half the boys and over three-quarters of the girls interviewed reported having had sex. A full 35 percent of those under 10 were found to be sexually active."

Violence

In 1993, the Candelária massacre drew the world's attention to violence towards street children. In December 1999, a Human Rights Watch report stated:

Street children throughout the world are subjected to routine harassment and physical abuse by police, government, and private security forces, out to wipe the streets clean of a perceived social blight. Street children face extortion, theft, severe beatings, mutilation, sexual abuse, and even death.

In April,2005, The New Internationalist magazine reported, "An average of three street children are killed every day in the state of Rio de Janeiro." In November 2007, the Consortium for Street Children's report on street children and violence stated:

Street children have accumulated experience of violence in many areas of their daily

lives, sometimes from a very young age. Combined and compounded effects of abuse and deprivation undermine their chances of developing into healthy young people

and adults. Each street child has a unique story of violence.

Health Problems

In 1993, WHO outlined the health problems particular to street children as follows: malnutrition and other disorders of diet, infectious diseases, oral health problems, drug use, unplanned pregnancies, injuries, psychiatric disorders, and cognitive disorders and learning difficulties. And, "While other children may have any or many of the above health problems, street life may increase prevalence, morbidity and mortality."

Due to drug use and unprotected sex, street children are at especially high risk of contacting HIV/AIDS.

A study published in the November 1, 2007 issue of the journal AIDS reports that 37.4% of street youth between the ages of 15 and 19 years old surveyed in St. Petersburg, Russia are HIV-positive, placing street youth in Russia among the populations most at-risk for HIV around the world.

Education

In addition to the physical and psychological traumas experienced by street children they generally do not receive formal education. Their way of life makes it difficult for them to attend school and they often do not possess the documents required (e.g. birth certificates) to allow them to register. They are also unlikely to be able to pay school fees and other expenses such as uniforms and school supplies.

Exploitation

Street children are often exploited by adults and older street children.

Sexual Exploitation

Street children are likely to experience sexual abuse and exploitation. Many initially engage in survival sex in exchange for basic needs such as food or shelter or for protection and later become prostitutes.

In Bangladesh, "Child rights activists yesterday expressed concern over the sexual exploitation of street children, saying that vested quarters are using them in pornographic movies. There is an alarming rise in the victimisation of street girls aged between 9 and 18 by pornographers...." In Kenya, "Sexual exploitation is a fact of life for them (street children)." In Mongolia, "According to an assessment by UNICEF of street and unsupervised children, migrant girls who live and/or work on the streets are often recruited into prostitution. Research by CHRD indicates that highly organised criminals take advantage of the girls’ vulnerability on the streets and force them down this path in order to profit from their exploitation."

Drug Trafficking and Theft

In Indonesia, "Some 16 percent of street children in Greater Jakarta are or have been involved in drug trafficking, a study by the International Labor Organization (ILO) says." In Malawi, "Unicef says street children become prone to engage in illegal work such as petty thieving. 'Many are led into illicit, thrilling and dangerous world of crime syndicates that run rings of pick pocketing, burglary, drug trafficking and prostitution,' says the organisation."

Labor

In Morocco, "Having never benefited from training, and being deprived of protection, working children are obliged to accept any kind of job, with very miserable wages." In Liberia, "Street children are most time exploited by adults who hire them to work for wages payable at the end of the month but often the contracts are terminated even before the end of the month without good reason and the children remain unpaid." In Vietnam, "After Luong’s mother abandoned him in the center of Ho Chi Minh City, the nine year-old washed cars to survive. Though he was exploited by his boss and paid virtually nothing, he was glad he had a safe place to sleep."

Survival Strategies

Street children are faced with the same requirements as other people but their circumstances and lack of experience, education, marketable skills, strength and maturity severely limit the ways they can provide for themselves. In addition, well-meaning initiatives such as campaigns against child labor and anti-begging legislation and programs may impact negatively on their capacity to support themselves.

Food

Street children often have problems getting enough to eat. If they do not have enough money to buy food on the street, they commonly scavenge through refuse bins to find it.

In Zimbabwe, Tanya, a 14 year old street girl says, "We cannot eat properly. We often get sick. We eat junk food from the rubbish – what you call leftovers. We go through the bins when the shops close. You often get chips in the bins – sometimes a bit of old salad. But we go very, very hungry...." In Iraq, an 11 year old street boy says, "For the past two years I have been living on the streets of Baghdad, surviving on leftovers that I scavenge from garbage or by stealing from people and shop-lifting." In Mongolia, "Nara is 10 years old and the sole guardian of her little sister Moogii. These sisters spend their days rummaging through piles of rubbish. They look for enough food to last through the day, wandering from place to place, sometimes walking across the whole city in search of food."

Shelter

Street children must find places to sleep where they are safe and protected from the weather. These include train and subway stations, beneath bridges and overpasses, in all-night cinemas and internet cafes, in sewers and over heating vents.

In Montevideo, Uruguay, a 16 year old street boy, Ricardo, "...lives in Parque Rodo (an amusement park; many children sleep in its abandoned underground bathrooms)." In Juba, Sudan, street children, "...sleep on the steps of buildings or in abandoned market stalls...." In Morocco, "As night empties the streets around Morocco’s main port of Casablanca, groups of young boys sleep on fishing nets, on cartons in the wholesale market or in doorways." In Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, "Children sleep in sewers, boiler rooms, on train stations."

Work

In the absence of support from governments or caregivers, street children must find some means of supporting themselves. They work at a wide variety of jobs, both legal and illegal, but many rely on an opportunistic combination of activities to get money. Typically they are engaged in begging, vending, services such as car washing or guarding, street entertainment, theft, prostitution and drug-dealing.

In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, "The children work shining shoes, selling lottery tickets and newspapers. Some kids sell postcards and gum to foreigners. Others make a living as sex workers and petty thieves." In Mukalla, Yemen, "Most street children work as street vendors, car cleaners and sometimes beggars." In Buenos Aires, Argentina, "More than 3,000 children — twice as many as in 2001 — wander the streets begging, scrounging through trash or opening cab doors for some change." In East Jakarta, Indonesia, a street boy, "alternated between being a street musician and a marijuana dealer...."

Interpersonal Relationships

In response to a common human need for interpersonal relationships and since there is some safety in numbers, street children form relationships with several or more other children with whom they sleep and share other resources. Sometimes these relationships are characterized as particularly strong, as in this description of street children in Kenya:

Ironically, as ostracized and rejected as urban child wanderers are, they collectively form the most solid sense of community of all groups in Kenya. They stand by each other through thick and thin in "three-musketeer" fashion. In contrast to much of the surrounding culture, they do not distribute themselves according to differences or tribal identity.

Writing about street children in Nepal, a worker with a street child project says, "Coming from hostile home environments and the need for personal security on the street, it becomes easy to understand the intense bonding that occurs among street children."

Agencies often view the relationships that street children form with their peers and others on the streets as damaging, leading to the acceptance of norms such as glue-sniffing, or as standing in the way of re-establishing relationships with family or the wider society and a primary strategy for some agencies is to "isolate these children from the environment they used to live in and offer them new values."

Government and Non-government Responses

Responses by Governments

Because they have not reached the age of majority street children have no representation in the governing process. They have no vote themselves nor by proxy through their parents, from whom they likely are alienated. Nor do street children have any economic leverage. Governments, consequently, may pay little attention to them.

The rights of street children are often ignored by governments despite the fact that the nearly all of the world's governments have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Governments are often embarrassed by street children and may blame parents or neighboring countries. Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) may also blamed for encouraging children to live in the streets by making street life more bearable or attractive through the services they provide.

When governments implement programs to deal with street children these generally involve placing the children in orphanages, juvenile homes or correctional institutes. However, some children are in the streets because they have fled from such institutions and some governments prefer to support or work in partnership with NGO programs. Governments sometimes institute roundups when they remove all the children from city streets and deposit them elsewhere or incarcerate them.

In the most extreme cases, governments may tacitly accept or participate in social cleansing operations that murder street children. In Brazil, for example, "Police say the death squads earn $40 to $50 for killing a street kid and as much as $500 for an adult. In January, Health Minister Alceni Guerra said the government had evidence that 'businessmen are financing and even directing the killing of street children.'"

NGO Responses

Non-government organizations employ a wide variety of strategies to address the needs and rights of street children. These may be categorized as follows:

• Advocacy - through media and government contacts agencies may press for the rights of street children to be respected.
• Preventive - programs that work to prevent children from taking to the streets, through family and community support and education.

• Institutional
  • residential rehabilitation programs - some agencies provide an environment isolated from the streets where activities are focussed on assisting children to recover from drug, physical or sexual abuse.
  • full-care residential homes - the final stage in many agencies' programs is when the child is no longer in the streets but lives completely in an environment provided by the agency. Some agencies promote fostering children to individual families. Others set up group homes where a small number of children live together with houseparents employed by the agency. Others set up institutional care centers catering to large numbers of children. Some agencies include a follow-up program that monitors and counsels children and families after the child has left the residential program.

• Street based programs - these work to alleviate the worst aspects of street life for children by providing services to them in the streets. These programs tend to be less expensive and serve a larger number of street children than institutional programs since the children still must provide for themselves in the streets.
  • feeding programs
  • medical services
  • legal assistance
  • street education
  • financial services (banking and entrepreneur programs)
  • family re-unification
  • drop-in centers/night shelters
  • outreach programs designed to bring the children into closer contact with the agency
• Conscientization - change street children's attitudes to their circumstances - view themselves as an oppressed minority and become protagonists rather than passive recipients of aid.

Many agencies employ several of these strategies and a child will pass through a number of stages before he or she "graduates." First he/she will be contacted by an outreach program, then may become involved in drop-in center programs, though still living in the streets. Later the child may be accepted into a half-way house and finally into residential care where he or she becomes fully divorced from street life.

Resources

NGOs focussed on street children from a global perspective

• European Foundation for Street Children http://www.enscw.org/
• Consortium for Street Children http://www.streetchildren.org.uk/
• REPER (Réseau d'Échanges Pour les Enfants des Rues)http://www.enfants-des-rues.com/

Project Directories

• Open Directory "streetkid" category lists several hundred websites of agencies working with street children in many different countries. http://www.dmoz.org/Society/People/Generations_and_Age_Groups/Youth/Streetkids/
• The Pangaea website lists contact information for many agencies working with street children around the world. http://pangaea.org/street_children/orgs/orgs.htm
• The Shine A Light website has an extensive collection of documents on working with street children in Latin America and large directory of NGO projects. http://www.shinealight.org/

Bibliographies

• Bibliography on Street Children http://www.geocities.com/joelmermet/streetchildren.html
• Children's Rights: Street Children http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/humanrights/bibliographies/kidbib.street.html

Street Children in the Media

Film

Street children have been the subjects of (and often leading actors in) some acclaimed dramatic films. In 1949, Director Luis Buñuel explored the lives of Mexican street children in "Los Olvidados." Street children in Sao Paulo, Brazil, are the subjects of Héctor Babenco's 1980 film, "Pixote." In her 1988 film, "Salaam Bombay," Mira Nair chronicled the life of a street boy in Mumbai, India. In 1995, Tony Gatlif directed a lyrical look at a few months in the life of a Gypsy street child in Nice, France, in "Mondo". More recently (2000), director Nabil Ayouch dramatised the lives of street boys in Casablanca, Morocco, in his film, "Ali Zaoua."

The lives of street children have also been illustrated in documentary films. "Children Underground" (2001 directed by Edet Belzberg) about street children living in a subway station in Bucharest, Romania, and "Children of Leningradsky" (2004 directed by Hanna Polak) about those who live in the Leningradsky Train Station in Moscow, are two recent examples.

News Media and Video

• The Pangaea website has archived news articles, some technical papers other links related to street children. http://pangaea.org/street_children/kids.htm
• World Street Children News is a searchable archive of articles largely from the popular press of many countries. http://streetkidnews.blogsome.com
• The "streetkidworld" channel on YouTube has compiled playlists of several hundred short videos about street children organized by continent. http://www.youtube.com/streetkidworld

References

Almudo (talk) 21:16, 19 January 2008 (UTC)Almudo Almudo (talk) 20:16, 12 February 2008 (UTC)Almudo - final sections added.