STREET CHILDREN
Street children are defined by UNICEF as boys and girls under 18years for whom the street
including unoccupied dwellings and wastelands has become home or other source of living
and who are inadequately protected or supervised. Estimates vary but often cited figure is that
street children are between 1m and 150m worldwide. Street children may be found on every
continent in the majority of the world cities. However, the majority of the street children are
found in under developed or poor countries.
Categories of street children
1. Children on the street. This is the category of children who often work on the street
and maintain regular ties with their families either living in slums or squatter
settlements, they return home at night or end of the day and have a sense of belonging
to a local community.
2. Children of the street. This category visit their homes occasionally, they see the street
as their home where they seek shelter, food and companionship.
3. Children in the street. Children in this category include abandoned children. The child
is cut off from all ties of the biological family and they are completely on their own.
Causes
Children may end up on the street for several basic reasons
1. Abandonment, orphaned or thrown out of their homes.
2. They may choose to live on the street because of mistreatment or neglect or because
their homes could not provide basic necessities
3. Poverty, when their earnings are needed to contribute to the family
4. Family break down
5. Armed conflict
6. Natural and man-made disasters like floods, drought, famine, tsunami, landslides, fire
out-breaks.
7. Peer pressure
8. HIV/AIDS
9. Urbanisation and over crowding
10. Dislocation through migration
11. Exploitation by adults
12. Physical and sexual abuse
Challenges faced by the street children
1. Lack of shelter
2. No education
3. They are not loved
4. They are traumatized/psychologically tortured
5. Murdered/killed through accidents, by their fellow children, child sacrifice
6. Child sacrifice
7. Sexually abused
8. There rights are undermined
9. No access to medication
10. No access to clean water and food
11. They become drug addicts
12. Starvation
13. Forced into prostitution
14. Poor hygiene
15. Diseases
16. Become criminals
17. Bullying
How do the children manage or cope
1. Stealing (pick pocketing, robbing or conning)
2. Encourage one another
3. By taking drugs
4. Barter trade
5. Prostitution
6. They live in gangs
7. They get some work to do
8. Some girls dress like boys to avoid sexual abuse
What happens to them as a result?
1. Lose hope, thinking life is meaning less
2. Their rights are denied
3. Early marriages/teenage pregnancies
4. Death
Solutions
1. Encourage parents to work and support their children
2. Parents to love their children
3. Implement policies to reduce poverty
4. Those who carry out child trafficking should be punished
Question
What are some of the reasons to why child abuse and neglect are so difficult to detect and
prevent
Why are children abused?
